Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55673
kickstart: documentation makes a note about undocumented --cleapart parameter
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:38:01 EDT
Description of problem: In the RHL 7.2 Official Customization Guide (page 38 of the PDF version) there is the following note: Note If --clearpart is used in the ks.cfg file, then --onpart cannot be used on a logical partition. The "--clearpart" parameter is not documented as a parameter of the "part" (partition) directive or anywhere else. One can understand from reading the documentation that this note actually means that if the partition table for a disk is cleared with the "clearpart" directive, then the "--onpart" parameter of the "part" directive should not be used with an argument of a partition of the disk that was cleared before. However this note should be corrected to make it clear and avoid confusion, unless there is actually such a parameter (--clearpart) which is simply not documented :) In such a case, it must be added to the documentation. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Not applicable. Actual Results: Not applicable. Expected Results: Not applicable. Additional info: Kickstart documentation (part of RHL Official Customization Guide) is not clear at several points. Most specifically, the two most noticeable issues are: A. It is not always clear what the right syntax for directive parameters that accept arguments is, i.e. if directive --parameter argument is right or if directive --parameter=argument is right. From experience, it usually does not make a difference, but using the "=" syntax is cleaner. But I have no clue the scripting language that anaconda uses (python) does process these syntax formats different. B. The documentation should include syntactical examples for every directive and parameter explained. It should also be explicitly noted when a directive requires at a minimum some parameters, which parameters are required to be used together and which parameters conflict with each other and should not be used together. There are some notes about such issues (e.g. see the part/partition directive documentation) but there are many more missing (also see Bug #55670). Similarly, directive dependencies and conflictions should be better documented (also see Bug #55672).
I am sorry, I didn't notice there was a separate component for the guide or else I wouldn't have added this as an anaconda issue :)
It should say "If the clearpart command is used in the ks.cfg file, then --onpart cannot be used on a logical partition" without the --. clearpart is a separate command. I have fixed this for the next version of the documentation. I will also work on adding more examples to the kickstart documentation.