Per Kickstart mailing list today: From: Brent Fox <bfox> Reply-To: kickstart-list To: kickstart-list Subject: [ks] Re: mkkickstart deprecated > And please, Red Hat, bring back a command line tool to create a ks.cfg > template! Hi guys...I wrote ksconfig. I wasn't aware that mkkickstart was being removed, so I didn't replicate the command line functionality. But I'd be more than happy to add it since it seems like you guys have a need for it. Can you open a bug against ksconfig as an RFE? I'll try to get it done by the next release. Cheers, Brent
Maintaining a command-line utility to create kickstart files is important to our work here. We find the command-line utility to be easier to use and control than a GUI tool.
So what kind of features are you looking for in a command-line tool? Do you want it to just auto-probe the machine and write a kickstart file based on what it finds, or are you wanting more interactivity?
I just discovered the lack of a CLI tool for making configurations. I simply want to add my voice to that of others. We don't run X on servers. So, we can't run ksconfig on servers. But, being able to automatically generate a kickstart file is important. Please consider this RFE for the next release. Thanks!
I had not gotten back to this -- I am sorry for the delay. By way of implementation sequence, I would ask: 1. That it be able to dump the running config of package list, possibly with comments breaking by Group, and wrapped in the surrounding headers like mkkickstart (and ksconfig) did/do. rpm -qa --qf '%{Group}\t#%{Name}\n'| sort type content, and then post-processessing to split on '*' and put col 1 into a comment header -- maybe adding this: rpm -qa --qf '%{Group}\t#%{Name}\t#%{Size}\n'| sort as the default sort order -- but a -z (size) option would also allow thoughtful pruning =========================== 2 as phase 2, there are great ready made modules in: bash-2.05a$ rpm -ql ksconfig | grep y$ /usr/share/ksconfig/auth.py /usr/share/ksconfig/basic.py /usr/share/ksconfig/bootloader.py /usr/share/ksconfig/checklist.py /usr/share/ksconfig/firewall.py /usr/share/ksconfig/install.py /usr/share/ksconfig/ksconfig.py /usr/share/ksconfig/ksconfig_gui.py /usr/share/ksconfig/network.py /usr/share/ksconfig/packages.py /usr/share/ksconfig/partWindow.py /usr/share/ksconfig/partition.py /usr/share/ksconfig/raidWindow.py /usr/share/ksconfig/savedialog.py /usr/share/ksconfig/savefile.py /usr/share/ksconfig/scripts.py /usr/share/ksconfig/xconfig.py bash-2.05a$ which contain a nice itemization of the options -- it may be expeditious to just add a -nox option and see what breaks -- and with that in hand, keep a common codebase. Obciously there is a wide array of radio and check boxes, and re-writing them all is much easier if one can call the .py with a --nox and be done with it. 3. Going forward, next I am thinking of a .rc file, similar to rpmrc, to isolate default options, and make preparation of the man page easier (the -nox effort pays off here, too). and so: 4. is the doco -- man pages at first, extension of the general .fs dogo for all those options, such as the ability to use the DISPLAY variable, come to mind. and howto's and sample configs, and a clear API for each .py module, so they can be extended in ways that neither you or I can vision -=- a true small competent *nix tool, on the stature of RPM. What do YOU think? -- Russ Herrold
just an update -- with the release of Limbo - the post RH 7.3 beta for the next version ... there is a move the an XML'ized comps -- This may regularize the console tool generation of the anaconda description file. Still wanted ...
I'd like to add a feature to the CLI wish list: it would be really nice if the CLI version could extract existing partitioning info and generate the required lines for the ks.cfg.
Ran out of time for this release, so I'm going to defer. I'm sorry that I didn't get it done in time, but we'll get it next time.
Ok, I'm working on this now.
I've got the basics of it working now, but I'm not too sure about trying to replicate the partition information. When you start considering machines that have RAID and/or LVM and/or a mixture of IDE and SCSI drives, recreating the parition table starts getting really complicated. If I recall correctly, mkkickstart never did that, so I don't consider this necessary to reproduce the functionality of mkkickstart. I agree that this would be a useful feature, but I don't have the time required to put on it.
Here is a safe and timely quickie. How about just dump: fdisk -l and cat /etc/fstab and /etc/raidtab with a leading "#" prepended, and leave it at that. --------------------------- This works for /etc/fstab ... for i in `cat /etc/fstab | grep -v ^# | awk -F"#" {'print $1'} | tr ' ' '#'` ; do echo -n "#" ; echo " $i" | tr '#' ' ' ; done produces: # /dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1 # /dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 # none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 # none /proc proc defaults 0 0 # none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 # /dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0 # /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0 # /dev/hdb3 /mnt/73/ ext3 noauto,defaults 1 1 # /dev/hdb1 /mnt/73/boot ext3 noauto,defaults 1 2 ---------------------------- The gnarly awk and tr is to get rid of trailing same line comments, and to preserve whitespace
I'm not going to get to the partitioning stuff this time around. I'm going to close this report since I've gotten most of what was requested implemented. redhat-config-kickstart-2.3.5-1 should appear in Rawhide in the next day or so.