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Installing 3rd party packages in kickstart on redhat


I have been trying to work out how to add my own packages as part of a kickstart install (specifically mondo packages) but using the %packages directive as opposed to rpm commands in the post scripts. I tried adding them to the packages file with my %include statement in the kickstart file, and copied the RPM's to the RH linux/Packages directory, however these packages don't get installed. I read something about comps.xml but dont have that file in the RHEL distribution, or know what the procedure is.

Essentially I have a package list which I include like this:

# cat packages.txt 
openssh-clients
openssh-server
afio-2.5-1.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
buffer-1.19-4.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
mindi-2.1.7-1.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
mindi-busybox-1.18.5-3.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
mondo-3.0.4-1.rhel6.x86_64.rpm

All the rpms from afio down are custom ones not part of the RH installation.

Could someone tell me how this can be done? thanks


Solution

  • All kickstart files should have a section near the top where they define available repos. An example repo line would look like this:

    repo --name=a-base    --baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/$basearch
    

    This tells the kickstart system that there is a usable rpm repo at the given url

    In order to add your own rpms you need to create a custom repo and point your kickstart files to it by adding a new repo line. Then you can list the core rpm package names in your %packages directive and they will be picked up.

    So for you it would be something like:

    ...
    repo --name=a-base    --baseurl=http://my.domain.org/customrepo/path/here
    
    %packages
    openssh-clients
    openssh-server
    afio
    buffer
    mindi
    mindi-busybox
    mondo
    ...