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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).

You probably want to look into installing the Smart Proxy (which could be on the same machine as well).

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://foreman/unattended/provision?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.

Modifying/Creating the template

See TemplateWriting

Template association to hosts

The guiding principle within Foreman is that we don't want to associate templates with hosts directly.
There are 4 ways to associate a template with a host

  1. Though a host group.
  2. Though an environment.
  3. Though a combination of a host group and an environment (such as web servers in development mode).
  4. Though an operating system.

Therefore, there are few steps which are required in order to relate hosts and templates.

  1. Make sure you define at least one operating systems.
  2. Create each template and associate the valid operating systems to it.
  3. Optionally, associate the template with hostgroups and/or environments.
  4. Edit the relevant operating system and define a default/fallback template for each relevant template type.

A special type of a template is called "PXE Default File" which is the default PXE template.
The included example will setup PXE menus for each configured host group (allowing you to deploy hosts without puppet if you require that functionality).

Dynamic disk partitioning

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

Specific distribution unattended installation details

gPXE

Desactivation

Edit config/settings.yaml and add this line:

:unattended: false

and restart your foreman instance.

See also :

see Provision KVM VM without DHCP

Troubleshooting Flowchart

Flowchart

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