Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Chapter 32. Kickstart Installations

32.1. What are Kickstart Installations?

Many system administrators would prefer to use an automated installation method to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on their machines. To answer this need, Red Hat created the kickstart installation method. Using kickstart, a system administrator can create a single file containing the answers to all the questions that would normally be asked during a typical installation.
Kickstart files can be kept on a single server system and read by individual computers during the installation. This installation method can support the use of a single kickstart file to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on multiple machines, making it ideal for network and system administrators.
Kickstart provides a way for users to automate a Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation.
All kickstart scriptlets and the log files of their execution are stored in the /tmp directory to assist with debugging installation failures.

Note

Anaconda now configures network interfaces with NetworkManager. Consequently, kickstart users that referenced the network settings located in /tmp/netinfo in previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux must now source the ifcfg files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts.