In theory all you need is a RedHat boot disk, onto which you copy your
KickStart configuration file. In practice I wasn't able to make this
work, and opted for an alternative approach...
- Intel (i386) class machines - KickStart appears to only work
on these at the time of writing.
- KickStart config file - we'll talk about this in the next
section!
- RedHat boot disk - preferably from the updates
directory, to take advantage of any fixes/driver updates.
- DNS entries for the IP addresses you'll be using - optional,
but will stop the installation from prompting you for your
machine's domain name.
- A BOOTP/DHCP server for the network(s) your machine(s) will
be installed on. Some servers will allocate new addresses in a
given range automatically, e.g.
the CMU BOOTP server with dynamic addressing extensions.
- On the same machine as the BOOTP server, an NFS server with
a copy of the RedHat distribution mounted on it, and the KickStart
config file (see next section for naming details) in an NFS exported
directory /kickstart.
It may be possible to do without the BOOTP server - this is certainly
implied in the KickStart documentation. I've not tried this myself.
Likewise, you may be able to install off a CD-ROM rather than an NFS
server. If you try either of these, let me know how you get on, so
that I can fold your info back into this document.
Note that it's not strictly necessary for the NFS server to hold both
the RedHat distribution and the KickStart config file - just makes
things a bit simpler to have everything in one place.