Publishing your kickstart file using httpd

You can save your kickstart file to a USB stick (or any other medium), but this becomes a bit cumbersome if you need to install multiple systems in different locations.

Loading kickstart files over the network from the kernel line during an install only supports NFS, HTTP, and FTP.

In this recipe, I choose HTTP as it is a common technology within companies and easy to secure.

How to do it…

Let's start by installing Apache httpd, as follows:

1. Install Apache httpd through the following command:

   ~]# yum install -y httpd
   

2. Enable and start the httpd daemon, as follows:

   ~]# systemctl enable httpd
   ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service' '/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/httpd.service'
   ~]# systemctl start httpd
   

3. Create a directory to contain the kickstart file(s) by running the following command:

   ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/html/kickstart
   ~]# chown apache:apache /var/www/html/kickstart
   ~]# chmod 750 /var/www/html/kickstart
   

4. Copy your kickstart file to this new location:

   ~]# cp kickstart.ks /var/www/html/kickstart/
   

5. In a browser, browse to the kickstart directory on your web server, as shown in the following screenshot:
   

There's more…

In this way, you can create multiple kickstart files, which will be available from anywhere in your network.

Additionally, you could use CGI-BIN, PHP, or any other technology that has an Apache module to dynamically create kickstart files based on the arguments that you specify in the URL.

An alternative to creating your own solution for dynamic kickstart files is Cobbler.

See also

For more info on Cobbler, go to http://cobbler.github.io/.