interactive kickstart ?

[Phil Meyer]

On 03/29/2012 03:46 PM, Gabriel L. Somlo wrote:
> Is there any way to keep environment variables across different
> sections of a kickstart file ? E.g., if during %pre I solicit some
> input:
>
> %pre
> echo "enter bootloader password now:">  /dev/tty
> read -s GRUBPW<  /dev/tty
> echo "you entered: ${GRUBPW}">  /dev/tty
> export GRUBPW
> %end
>
> ... is there any way to make $GRUBPW visible later on, on the
> 'bootloader' line in the main section of the kickstart file?
> I.e., can I make something like this work:
>
> bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=sda --password=${GRUBPW}
>
> Is there a better way to solicit the bootloader password interactively
> (as I'd prefer not to publish it in a kickstart file, for reasons
> similar to why I'm not including a 'rootpw' line) ?
>
> Also, this is not the only application. I'd like to use environment
> variables read during %pre in %post (in order to ask all the questions
> early on, then proceed with an unattended install).
>

We typically use a /tmp file in the %pre section to hold data needed in 
a %post or other section, and then %include it.

example:  Note that the  %pre section comes 'after' the %include  
keyword in the kickstart, meaning that %pre is executed first, before 
the actual kickstart ...

...
%include /tmp/partitions
%pre
awk 'BEGIN {disk=""} /a$/ {if (disk == "") disk=$4} END {printf "part 
swap --size=4096 --ondisk=%s\npart / --fstype ext3 --size 1 --grow 
--asprimary --ondisk=%s\n", disk, disk}' /proc/partitions > /tmp/partitions
%end
...

Lots of folks generate the bulk of the kickstart from the %pre script.

Good Luck!