RHEL Engineering is moving the tracking of its product development work on RHEL 6 through RHEL 9 to Red Hat Jira (issues.redhat.com). If you're a Red Hat customer, please continue to file support cases via the Red Hat customer portal. If you're not, please head to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira and file new tickets here. Individual Bugzilla bugs in the statuses "NEW", "ASSIGNED", and "POST" are being migrated throughout September 2023. Bugs of Red Hat partners with an assigned Engineering Partner Manager (EPM) are migrated in late September as per pre-agreed dates. Bugs against components "kernel", "kernel-rt", and "kpatch" are only migrated if still in "NEW" or "ASSIGNED". If you cannot log in to RH Jira, please consult article #7032570. That failing, please send an e-mail to the RH Jira admins at rh-issues@redhat.com to troubleshoot your issue as a user management inquiry. The email creates a ServiceNow ticket with Red Hat. Individual Bugzilla bugs that are migrated will be moved to status "CLOSED", resolution "MIGRATED", and set with "MigratedToJIRA" in "Keywords". The link to the successor Jira issue will be found under "Links", have a little "two-footprint" icon next to it, and direct you to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira (issue links are of type "https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-XXXX", where "X" is a digit). This same link will be available in a blue banner at the top of the page informing you that that bug has been migrated.
Bug 1740740 - [RFE] Add the whiptail command to the kickstart environment for RHEL 8.
Summary: [RFE] Add the whiptail command to the kickstart environment for RHEL 8.
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Classification: Red Hat
Component: lorax-templates-rhel
Version: 8.2
Hardware: All
OS: All
unspecified
high
Target Milestone: rc
: 8.0
Assignee: Brian Lane
QA Contact: Release Test Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2019-08-13 15:03 UTC by jcastran
Modified: 2021-10-21 14:27 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2019-08-13 16:43:44 UTC
Type: Bug
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description jcastran 2019-08-13 15:03:41 UTC 
1. Proposed title of this feature request

Add the whiptail command to the kickstart environment for RHEL 8.



3. What is the nature and description of the request?
Add the newt package to the kickstart environment for RHEL 8. We use the whiptail command to generate user dialog boxes and prompt for input during semi-automated kickstart installs. This has worked well for us in RHEL 7, but I find that the newt package and whiptail command are no longer in the kickstart environment as of RHEL 8.

4. Why does the customer need this? (List the business requirements here)
to generate user dialog boxes and prompt for input during semi-automated kickstart installs

5. How would the customer like to achieve this? (List the functional requirements here)
Add the whiptail command to the installation environment

6. For each functional requirement listed, specify how Red Hat and the customer can test to confirm the requirement is successfully implemented.
We can test this

7. Is there already an existing RFE upstream or in Red Hat Bugzilla?
No

8. Does the customer have any specific time-line dependencies and which release would they like to target (i.e. RHEL5, RHEL6)?
RHEL 8

9. Is the sales team involved in this request and do they have any additional input?
No

10. List any affected packages or components.
newt

11. Would the customer be able to assist in testing this functionality if implemented?
Yes
Comment 2 Samantha N. Bueno 2019-08-13 16:43:44 UTC 
This is out of scope for what we support in kickstart and would add a considerable support/maintenance burden that engineering can not sustain.

I would like to understand the need for this, however, and perhaps we can make changes to kickstart which would render this unnecessary:
- Why is it necessary to pop up dialog boxes prompting for input? As opposed to, say, having a partially filled kickstart and letting the installer halt once it processes the ks file and displays the error/warning messages on the spoke statuses.
- What information is being requested from users during kickstart? (If it is something generic enough, perhaps this is a need we can address that would satisfy other customers as well, for example.)

I'm going to close this bug since we are not going to add the requested support (which is what this bug is specifically about), but we can continue our discussion (emails will still be sent to me and anyone else Cc'ed on it).
Comment 3 Martin Kolman 2019-08-14 10:06:38 UTC 
Also, if user interaction during installation is really needed & very specific to the needs of the customer, there is the option to deploy a custom Anaconda Addon[0][1]. Addons are the proper way to gather information from users during the installation, can run in GUI/TUI or both, can be configured via kickstart through their own section as well as to run arbitrary tasks at install time.

[0] https://rhinstaller.github.io/anaconda-addon-development-guide/
[1] https://github.com/rhinstaller/hello-world-anaconda-addon/tree/rhel-8
Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.