TRIUMF Grid System Management Documentation

Kickstart Configuration Details

Here is an example kickstart configuration file. Each section is briefly described below.
  • Preamble
    • The preamble, at the top of the file, specifies generic configuration defaults for our site.  Note that the disk partitioning is specified in this section.  In order to work around well-known issues with kickstart disk partitioning it is done instead in the %pre section, and simply included in the preamble with an %include directive.
  • %packages
    • The list of package groups installed in the cluster is a small subset of the usual desktop linux system.  In particular we aim for nearly complete development systems without common desktop package groups.  The 'YUM', 'APT, and 'Packages added to Scientific Linux' are comps groups that are specifically provided by Scientific Linux.
      A few additional individual packages are added, and unnecessary individual packages are removed.
  • %pre
    • The pre section is used to partition the disk.  It is important to note that this example does the following:
      • selects the first hard disk for partitioning.  This is done somewhat intelligently for IDE disks, and rather stupidly for disks that appear as SCSI disks, in which case /dev/sda is simply specified.
      • WIPES any pre-existing partitions off this disk using the o option of fdisk:
          o  create a new empty DOS partition table
      • creates a standard set of partitions with sizes as mentioned in the example ks config file.
  • %post
    • The post section is the most complex part of the script where we try to configure the node as completely as possible.  Major tasks include:
      • delete unwanted services
      • make some adjustments in /etc/fstab
      • synchronize this node with our generic configurations in /ks/rtrees/VERSION/os/, and with any specific configuration meant only for this host in /ks/rtrees/VERSION/nodes/`hostname`/
      • apply SL errata
      • add local accounts
      • install and configure as much as possible the target LCG packages meant for this node.