• How do I use unattended installations (Kickstart, jumpstart, preseed)?
• Whats inside the provisioning templates (Kickstart / jumpstart /preseed, pxelinux etc) ?
• Modifying/Creating the template
• Dynamic disk partition

How do I use unattended installations (Kickstart, jumpstart, preseed)?¶

Foreman manages the host creation process by controlling a host's DHCP, DNS, TFTP boot files, Puppet CA and node classification. This is whole process is handled in the core foreman program and in several satellite proxies running at various locations within the organization. More details can be found on the Foreman_Architecture page.

Foreman automates network boot processes using PXEboot, gPXE, (or native Solaris net:dhcp in the future.) It also manages the host's DHCP and DNS entries as of version 0.2.

Whats inside the provisioning templates (Kickstart / jumpstart /preseed, pxelinux etc) ?¶

These files are all generated dynamically based on the setting of each host in Foreman, things like partition tables and root password can be unique per server.

if you want to see the kickstart/preseed etc you may use the spoof parameter, just point your browser to:

http://foremanhost:3000/unattended/kickstart?spoof=123.321.123.321

• 123.321.123.321 is the hosts IP Address (the one you want to build).
• usually you want to see the page source, the browser might display the file in html which will result in hard to read output.
• if you are using passenger please remove the ":3000" from the URL.

Modifying/Creating the template¶

See TemplateWriting

Dynamic disk partition¶

It is possible to use a script (e.g a kickstart post script) instead of a static partition table.
see Dynamic disk partioning

Note Kickstart requires that Foreman port would be 80, therefor you should probably configure foreman using passenger or alternative technologies.
(Examples could be found in our reference Foreman Puppet module