How to kickstart a workstation installation?

[Thomas Cameron]

Right now, if I want a workstation, I use the bootable workstation image 
on a USB thumb drive and choose to install the workstation image to my 
hard drive. Then I have to go back afterwards and run a bunch of yum 
groupinstall commands to get my machine where I want it. Not ideal for 
multiple installations.

I used the F33 Everything DVD image and got closer, but I still don't 
see a way to use it to kickstart a VM or a desktop.

I even used the Fedora Server DVD image and did a bunch of yum 
groupinstall in %post, but every time I got an error about plymouth and 
it hung.

How the heck do I kickstart a workstation? Preferably from the 
F33-Everything DVD image so I can set up Xfce.

Thomas

[Qiyu Yan]

在 2021-04-14星期三的 10:33 -0500，Thomas Cameron写道：
> Right now, if I want a workstation, I use the bootable workstation
> image 
> on a USB thumb drive and choose to install the workstation image to my 
> hard drive. Then I have to go back afterwards and run a bunch of yum 
> groupinstall commands to get my machine where I want it. Not ideal for 
> multiple installations.

Try following this guide:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/rawhide/install-guide/advanced/K...
> I used the F33 Everything DVD image and got closer, but I still don't
> see a way to use it to kickstart a VM or a desktop.
>
> I even used the Fedora Server DVD image and did a bunch of yum 
> groupinstall in %post, but every time I got an error about plymouth and
> it hung.
>
> How the heck do I kickstart a workstation? Preferably from the 
> F33-Everything DVD image so I can set up Xfce.
>
> Thomas
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[James Szinger]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:33:27 -0500
Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> How the heck do I kickstart a workstation? Preferably from the 
> F33-Everything DVD image so I can set up Xfce.

Check out the --kickstart option to livecd-iso-to-disk.  The last tiem
I did this I used a command like:

livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr --ks /tmp/inst.ks \
    /mnt/data/iso/CentOS7/CentOS-7-x86_64-NetInstall-1804.iso /dev/sdd

to create a bootable USB drive with a kickstart.  It should work the
same for Fedora as CentOS.

Or you can add the inst.ks for anaconda when you boot the DVD, but you
need to type it in.  Or put the ISO and kickstart on a PXE server.

Jim

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 10:33:27AM -0500, Thomas Cameron wrote:
> I used the F33 Everything DVD image and got closer, but I still
> don't see a way to use it to kickstart a VM or a desktop.

What problems are you having here? I think simply putting

@^workstation-product-environment

in the %packages should do it.

Also: I would suggest using the Everything Net Installer

https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/33/Everything/x...

rather than the DVD ISO because you can then install with updates from the
start rather than needing to download them all immediately after. If you're
doing a bunch of installs where that causes extra traffic, make a local
mirror or use a local caching proxy.

[Thomas Cameron]

On 4/14/21 10:53 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 10:33:27AM -0500, Thomas Cameron wrote:
> > I used the F33 Everything DVD image and got closer, but I still
> > don't see a way to use it to kickstart a VM or a desktop.
>
> What problems are you having here? I think simply putting
>
> @^workstation-product-environment
>
> in the %packages should do it.
>
> Also: I would suggest using the Everything Net Installer
>
> https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/33/Everything/x...
>
> rather than the DVD ISO because you can then install with updates from the
> start rather than needing to download them all immediately after. If you're
> doing a bunch of installs where that causes extra traffic, make a local
> mirror or use a local caching proxy.

Sorry, I actually asked the question terribly.

I wanted to test a ks.cfg that would install the Xfce desktop and 
LibreOffice and also do some stuff in %post like install the RPM Fusion 
repo files and Google Chrome. I was testing using kvm images. I realized 
I could point my install media URL at one of the public mirrors of the 
Everything repo and then add the ins.ks=http://host/f33ks.cfg and just 
not even put a local installation source.

I've got it running in a KVM guest and I'll test on bare metal in a few 
minutes.

I'll probably rsync a public Everything mirror to my installation server 
so I can use a local Cobbler instance to do my installs.

Sorry for the noise.

Thomas