Kickstart (Linux)

Kickstart is normally used at sites with many such Linux systems, to allow easy installation^[1] and consistent configuration of new computer systems.

Kickstart configuration files can be built three ways:

1. By hand.
2. By using the GUI system-config-kickstart tool.
3. By using the standard Red Hat installation program Anaconda.

Anaconda will produce an anaconda-ks.cfg configuration file at the end of any manual installation. This file can be used to automatically reproduce the same installation or edited (manually or with system-config-kickstart).

The kickstart file is a simple text file, containing a list of items, each identified by a keyword.

While not strictly required, there is a natural order for sections that should be followed. Items within the sections do not have to be in a specific order unless otherwise noted. The section order is:

• Command section – single line general purpose commands.
• The %packages section – listing of software packages to be installed & related options.
• The %pre, %pre-install, %post, %onerror, and %traceback sections – can contain scripts that will be executed at the appropriate time during the installation.

The %packages, %pre, %pre-install, %post, %onerror, and %traceback sections are all required to be closed with %end.

Items that are not required for the given installation run can be omitted.

Lines starting with a pound sign (#) are treated as comments and are ignored.

If deprecated commands, options, or syntax are used during a kickstart installation, a warning message will be logged to the anaconda log. Since deprecated items are usually removed within a release or two, it makes sense to check the installation log to make sure you haven’t used any of them. When using ksvalidator, deprecated items will cause an error.

A simple Kickstart for a fully automated Fedora installation.

# use Fedora mirror as installation source, set Fedora version and target architectureurl --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-33&arch=x86_64# set installation languagelang en_US.UTF-8# set keyboardkeyboard us# set root passwordrootpw 12345# create a sudo capable useruser --name wikipedia-user --password 12345 --groups=wheel#set timezonetimezone America/New_York# clear all existing storage (!)zerombrclearpart --all --initlabel# automatically create default storage layoutautopart%packages# install the Fedora Workstation environment@^Fedora Workstation# install some package groups@3D Printing@C Development Tools and Libraries@System Tools# install some packagesvimgitmc%end

• Kickstart commands in Fedora - Kickstart command reference for Fedora
• Kickstart command and options reference - Kickstart command reference for RHEL 8

• Cobbler^[2]
• Jumpstart (Solaris)
• Preseed (Debian, Ubuntu)
• FAI (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, SUSE)
• AutoYaST (SUSE)
• System Installer
• Network Installation Manager