On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 18:34 -0400, Stan Dereska wrote:
> After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days ago, I
> tried to follow the installation procedure using a CD but my PC failed
> to recognize an OS (I've erased the hard drive which had Win XP).
In what sense was the failure? The same as your next paragraph, or
something else? (I couldn't tell if you were describing something else
that you've tried, regarding kickstart, or if that was what you tried in
the first place.)
You couldn't boot the CD to start the install? It went through the
motions of installing, but when you tried to boot the PC, you didn't get
anything? Something else?
> The book describes an install procedure using a CD from a program
> called "kickstart" that causes my machine to recognize the CD, I
> believe. How do I boot up to install FC 6 ? Where can I download
> kickstart ?
"kickstart" is a file that can be used by an installer to preselect
everything that you want installing. It's used by people installing to
several machines, who want to do the same on each box, without having to
manually customise them. It's just a plain text file, and the install
CD or DVD has all it needs to make use of one, if you have one.
You don't need to use this, you can run the installer and go with the
default options, or customise things through the install routine.
A basic installation recipe is to:
* Boot your computer from the DVD or CD. You *may* have to change
a BIOS option so that it doesn't boot straight from the hard
drive. How you do that depends on your computer. If you need
advice on that, post *exactly* what model computer or
motherboard you have.
* You'll get a menu when you boot from the disc, and you can
follow the prompts. All being well, that's about as hard as it
should get.
* The install will start, taking somewhere from twenty-minutes
upwards to complete, depending on the circumstances (speed of
your hardware, how much you picked to install, etc.). You're
shown some information and asked some questions, it's
interactive.
* At the finish, you'll be prompted to remove the install disc and
reboot. Now you'll go through a few start up questions as it
boots from the hard drive for the first time. It should only
take a few minutes to complete this.
There's installation guides at this address that you might look at:
<http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/fc6/>
After the installation, there'll be an anaconda-ks.cfg file in the /root
directory. That's a kickstart file, and it contains the options you
used to install this system. You could use that file if you wanted to
duplicate the install.
The following is what mine looked like, though I've removed the
passwords and wrote [my password was here]. That's one reason to be
careful of posting kickstart files and using other people's. Another is
that there's some customisation options that only apply to me (such as
the hard drive partitioning, languages, timezones, etc.). The rest of
the thing pertains to the groups of packages to be installed (written
after @ signs), particular packages to be installed (the next series of
names), and particular packages not to be installed (the next series of
names, with a - in front of them). You don't need this, I'm just
showing you what one might look like.
# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.
install
harddrive --partition=sda7 --dir=managing/fedora
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
xconfig --startxonboot
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw --iscrypted [my password was here]
firewall --enabled --port=22:tcp
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --enforcing
timezone --utc Australia/Adelaide
bootloader --location=partition --driveorder=sdb,sda --append="rhgb quiet" --md5pass=[my password was here]
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
#clearpart --linux
#part /boot --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb1
#part /var --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb5
#part /home --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb2
#part /tmp --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb3
#part /usr --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb8
#part / --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb6
#part swap --noformat --onpart sda6
#part swap --noformat --onpart sdb7
%packages
@office
@admin-tools
@editors
@system-tools
@british-support
@text-internet
@dns-server
@gnome-desktop
@core
@base
@hardware-support
@games
@java
@base-x
@graphics
@web-server
@dial-up
@printing
@mail-server
@server-cfg
@sound-and-video
@graphical-internet
createrepo
festival
fuse
audit
lynx
pax
fonts-chinese
fonts-korean
fonts-japanese
libsane-hpaio
netpbm-progs
apachetop
awstats
festvox-rms-arctic-hts
festvox-clb-arctic-hts
festvox-bdl-arctic-hts
-planner
-slrn
-cadaver
-mutt
-synaptics
-linuxwacom
-tux
-isdn4k-utils
-rp-pppoe
-evolution-webcal
--
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.22.1-33.fc7 i686 i386
Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5. Today, it's FC7.
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.
