Network install point httpd with Centos or RHEL6 using kickstart

Why set up a network install point? So you can do consistent Linux installations. Really so you can do the same installation over and over again and come out with consistent results. Today’s article is how to set up the install point and have it work. There is credit for the source article below but by itself that article will not work for Centos 6.

The chosen install path is /var/www/html/centos/6.2

When it is released Centos 6.3 will go in a directory named 6.3

My source iso images are in a bootable partition, not an lvm mount called /iso

Partial ll listing:

-rw-r–r–. 1 root   root   4423129088 Dec 15 20:50 CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso
-rw-r–r–. 1 root   root   1317967872 Dec 15 20:50 CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD2.iso

 

mount -o loop /iso/CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso /mnt
# The file name does not matter a bit. Just use the one you have downloaded.
# Make sure nothing is already mounted on /mnt folder

Copy the install point to your target directory.

cp -rvf /mnt/* /var/www/html/centos/6.2

This will miss two files, .discinfo and .treeinfo which kickstart needs to work right.

cp /mnt/.discinfo /var/www/html/centos/6.2 

cp /mnt/.treeinfo /var/www/html/centos/6.2 What the install depot should look like:
 umount and repeat for DVD2 ls -lart /var/www/html/centos/6.2

Output:
[root@solaria 6.2]# ls -lart /var/www/html/centos/6.2
total 536
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root   4096 Feb 21 20:52 EFI
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  18009 Feb 21 20:52 GPL
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root   4096 Feb 21 20:52 images
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root   4096 Feb 21 20:52 isolinux
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1354 Feb 21 20:53 RELEASE-NOTES-en-US.html
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root     14 Feb 21 20:54 CentOS_BuildTag
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    212 Feb 21 20:54 EULA
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 450560 Feb 21 20:55 Packages
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1706 Feb 21 20:55 RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1730 Feb 21 20:55 RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-Debug-6
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1730 Feb 21 20:55 RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-Security-6
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   1734 Feb 21 20:55 RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-Testing-6
-r--r--r--. 1 root root   2056 Feb 21 20:55 TRANS.TBL
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root   4096 Feb 22 21:51 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root     31 Feb 23 22:22 .discinfo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    338 Feb 23 22:22 .treeinfo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   2952 Feb 28 20:05 mars-ks.cfg
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   2975 Feb 28 20:05 columbia-ks.cfg
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   2975 Feb 28 20:33 pacifica-ks.cfg
drwxr-xr-x. 7 root root   4096 Feb 28 20:33 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root   4096 Feb 29 20:12 repodata

for the install from kickstart to work, you will need to update the repodata and create the group information to avoid some nasty install issues that will frustrate you a lot.
 cd /var/www/html/centos/6.2

 

createrepo -u -g /var/www/html/centos/6.2/repodata/

Output

[root@solaria 6.2]# createrepo -u -g /var/www/html/centos/6.2/repodata/

Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
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Source material: http://diznix.com/articles/installing-linux-via-the-network/