The anatomy of Fedora Server kickstart files

Peter Boy Version F36-F37 Last review: n/a

Status: work in progress! Text is still raw and basically unedited yet.

TBD

Creating a Kickstart File

The Kickstart file itself is a plain text file, containing keywords listed [Kickstart Syntax Reference], the Kickstart Appendix of Anaconda reference guide, which serve as directions for the installation. Any text editor able to save files as ASCII text (such as Gedit or vim on Linux systems or Notepad on Windows systems) can be used to create and edit Kickstart files.

The recommended approach to creating Kickstart files is to perform a manual installation on one system first. After the installation completes, all choices made during the installation are saved into a file named anaconda-ks.cfg, located in the /root/ directory on the installed system. You can then copy this file, make any changes you need, and use the resulting configuration file in further installations.

When creating a Kickstart file, keep in mind the following:

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

  • Sections must be specified in order. Items within the sections do not have to be in a specific order unless otherwise specified. The correct section order is:

    • The command section which contains actual Kickstart commands and options as listed in the refernce guide.

Note that some commands, such as install, are mandatory, but most commands are optional.

+ ** The %packages section which contains a list of packages and package groups to be installed. See Reference Guide for details.

+ ** The %pre and %post sections, containing a pre-installation and post-installation scripts. These two sections can be in any order and are not mandatory. See Refernce Guide for details.

+

The %packages, %pre and %post sections must end with %end, otherwise the installation program will refuse the Kickstart file. The main command section has no special ending statement.

  • Omitting any required item results in the installation program prompting the user for an answer to the related item, just as the user would be prompted during a typical installation. Once the answer is given, the installation will continue. Note that if the system you are installing has no display, you will not be able to see the prompt, and the installation will appear to have failed.

Verifying the Kickstart File

When creating or customizing your kickstart file, it is useful to verify that it is valid before attempting to use it in an installation. Fedora includes the ksvalidator command line utility which can be used to do this. This tool is a part of the pykickstart package. To install this package, execute the following command:

# dnf install pykickstart

After installing the package, you can validate a Kickstart file using the following command:

$ ksvalidator /path/to/kickstart.ks

Replace /path/to/kickstart.ks with the path to the Kickstart file you want to verify.

For more information about this tool, see the ksvalidator(1) man page.

Keep in mind that the validation tool has its limitations. The Kickstart file can be very complicated; ksvalidator can make sure the syntax is correct and that the file does not include removed options, but it cannot guarantee the installation will be successful. It also does not attempt to validate the %pre, %post and %packages sections of the Kickstart file.

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