moving kickstart forward

[Thomas Sanders]

I currently build my kickstart files in sections based on OS and then put
them together with a script.
An example:
preamble.centos, preamble.centos7, preamble.fedora, preamble.ubuntu

Everything gets concatenated together like this
cat header preamble.centos partitions.centos pre post repos.centos packages
packages.centos packages.gui packages.centosgui packages.end >
ks-centos6-gui.cfg

We use %pre to obtain info about the system like:
Which NIC to configure
Hostname
IP
MASK
Primary user
Admin user
What OU the host should be added
And the original proc/cmdline (so I can get some info like what kickstart
file was originally used in the PXE boot)

These are all placed in /tmp/installVars as key=value

That file (and other logs) are moved in %post --nochroot
Then it is made available to the regular %post via the following:
## get installVars from /root/install_logs/installVars
while IFS="=" read -r key value; do
  case "$key" in
    '#'*)
      # do nothing for comments
    ;;
    *)
      eval "$key=\"$value\""
    ;;
  esac
done < /root/install_logs/installVars


It would be GREAT if we could get user input a little easier than using our
own scripts in %pre

I would like to +1 on the getting "%pre --log /tmp/ks-pre.log" working,
currently my work around is
exec < /dev/tty3 > /dev/tty3 2>&1
chvt 3
(
...
) 2>&1 | /usr/bin/tee -a /tmp/ks-pre.log

-Thomas


On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 8:54 AM, Chris Lumens <clumens at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hey everyone, I've been maintaining pykickstart and kickstart support in
> anaconda in general for a very long time now, though I've not been very
> active on this list.
>
> I'm going to be looking at kickstart exclusively for the forseeable
> future.  Specifically, my focus is going to be on widening its adoption
> and making it more useful to everyone.  The first step in this process
> is information gathering.
>
> Here's what I would like to know from you guys:
>
> * How do you use kickstart right now?  What work flows do you have
> around it?  Do you generate kickstart files from some process?  Do you
> store them in version control?
>
> * What do you do in your kickstart files?  Do you have extensive %pre
> and %post sections?  If so, what kinds of things are you doing in them?
> Are you doing anything that would be generally useful that I should be
> doing for you?  Do you ever use %traceback?  Do you have unusual stuff
> going on in %packages?
>
> * What can I do to make your life easier?  What annoys you about
> kickstart right now?  What do you wish it did?  What do you wish it
> didn't do?  Would making it more like a language be helpful?  Would
> making it easier to define site-specific commands be helpful?
>
> I know this is all really vague stuff, but I am just starting out on
> this project.  I don't even really know where this is going to take me
> yet.
>
> I'd also like to emphasize that whatever I end up doing, I want to keep
> compatibility with kickstart as it exists today.  That's something I
> take seriously in pykickstart.
>
> - Chris
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Kickstart-list at redhat.com
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>
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