[Spacewalk-list] how to use 'file preservation'?

[Stephen Herr]

File preservation will only work with re-provisioning (through 
Spacewalk, so not PXE booting), and it's expected that there's no change 
to the kickstart file.

It should work with what you've tried though.

File preservation works by saving the files listed to a particular place 
on the filesystem (/tmp/ks-tree-copy) when rhn_check picks up the 
reprovision action, and then the kickstart file always contains a 
section to copy files in that dir (if any) back onto the filesystem 
after the kickstart. So the kickstart file will not change because it 
always contains that section.

Try scheduling another reprovision with that profile, running "rhn_check 
-vvv" by hand to pick up the action so you can see the verbose output on 
the console, and then 'shutdown -c' to cancel the three minute reboot 
timer so you can poke around. Between the console output and looking at 
/tmp/ks-tree-copy maybe that will give you a hint about what's wrong.

-Stephen

On 01/29/2015 08:17 AM, Yuriy Demchenko wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wonder how to use 'file preservation' function during kickstart? I
> need to re-provision several systems via kickstart, preserving several
> config files.
> I've created file preservation list in 'system->kickstart->file
> preservation', then checked this list in kickstart profile
> '<profilename> ->system details->file preservation', clicked 'update
> kickstart'
> however, I cant see any changes to the raw kickstart file
> and when I do re-provision with that kickstart (either via 'provision'
> tab in SW, or just pxe-booting with selected profile) required configs
> are not preserved.
> What am I missing?
> I'm using spacewalk-2.2
>