KarmicKickstart

Revision 1 as of 2009-06-09 12:46:59

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Summary

Ensure that we are fully compatible with Kickstart for the most common requirements and everything that is used through our installer, including RAID+LVM, encrypted partitions, and RHEL 5 Kickstart file compatibility.

Release Note

Kickstart compatibility in the installer has been updated with reference to RHEL 5.

Rationale

Our Kickstart compatibility implementation was created with reference to Red Hat Linux 9, and has not been updated to cover additions in more recent Red Hat releases. Several of the new commands are useful to administrators deploying Ubuntu.

There are some high-priority commands which were in RHL 9 but for which compatibility was never implemented in Ubuntu; we should clear these up, as they are frequently requested.

User stories

Assumptions

Design

You can have subsections that better describe specific parts of the issue.

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Include:

  • data migration, if any
  • redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
  • how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during testing, and to show off after release. Please add an entry to http://testcases.qa.ubuntu.com/Coverage/NewFeatures for tracking test coverage.

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Unresolved issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.

BoF agenda and discussion

Ubuntu Kickstart documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/installation-guide/i386/automatic-install.html

Existing implementation: RHL 9 - http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/custom-guide/part-install-info.html
Desired implementation: RHEL 5 - http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch-kickstart2.html

New commands:
 * ignoredisk - skip specified disks in the partitioner
 * firstboot - control whether "Setup Agent" is started after reboot
 * iscsi - IP/target/port/user/password options for iSCSI installation
 * logging - syslog handling
 * mediacheck - equivalent to cdrom-checker
 * multipath
 * halt, poweroff - halt or switch off the power at end of installation rather than rebooting
 * repo - configure additional package sources
 * selinux
 * services - modify default set of services to run under default runlevel (probably not a good idea to try this until Upstart settles?)
 * vnc
  * would need to be added to network-console (currently SSH only) - only really useful for graphical mode

New options:
 * 'install harddrive --biospart=BIOSID', 'part --onbiosdisk=BIOSID' (e.g. 82) - apparently with EDD
  * From git://git.fedorahosted.org/anaconda.git
 * wireless support options in 'network' command

Old things we already knew weren't supported but which are important:
 * RAID, especially LVM-on-RAID

Approximate priorities:
 1. RAID
 2. iSCSI

Low-hanging fruit:
 * repo
 * mediacheck?
 * halt, poweroff

Should give the configurator (system-config-kickstart) a refresh
Web interface for Kickstart file generation? (Colin vaguely remembers a third-party service)


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