So, I bought a hosting plan on godaddy.com, and am in the process of moving all my blog content over there.  It has been interesting so far – although I didn’t attempt to install WordPress manually this time through.  I’m looking forward to learning more about WordPress!

I’m going to have a lot of fun learning how to use this!

# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.
# 20090904 dsw updated

install
cdrom
key –skip
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
xconfig –startxonboot

rootpw –iscrypted <encrypted password here>

firewall –disabled
authconfig –enableshadow –enablemd5
selinux –disabled

timezone –utc America/Detroit

bootloader –location=mbr –driveorder=cciss/c0d0 –append=”rhgb quiet”

# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
clearpart –linux
part /boot –fstype ext3 –size=256
part pv.14 –size=69194
volgroup vg00 –pesize=32768 pv.14
logvol /var/crash –fstype ext3 –name=lvol9 –vgname=vg00 –size=2048
logvol /0b –fstype ext3 –name=lvol1 –vgname=vg00 –size=43456
logvol /home –fstype ext3 –name=lvol10 –vgname=vg00 –size=512
logvol swap –fstype swap –name=lvol2 –vgname=vg00 –size=2048
logvol /usr –fstype ext3 –name=lvol7 –vgname=vg00 –size=6976
logvol /tmp –fstype ext3 –name=lvol4 –vgname=vg00 –size=1024
logvol /var –fstype ext3 –name=lvol8 –vgname=vg00 –size=4096
logvol /home_local –fstype ext3 –name=lvol5 –vgname=vg00 –size=1024
logvol /opt –fstype ext3 –name=lvol6 –vgname=vg00 –size=6976
logvol / –fstype ext3 –name=lvol3 –vgname=vg00 –size=1024

%packages
<lots of packages listed here>

%post
mkdir /mnt/dvd
mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/dvd
mkdir /opt/tools
cp /mnt/dvd/isolinux/EXTRAS/* /opt/tools
umount /mnt/dvd
rmdir /mnt/dvd

# unpack and install whatever tools we can
cd /opt/tools
gunzip -c hptools.tar.gz | tar xvf -
 

# Two commands because I wasn’t sure which one would work
eject /dev/scd0
eject cdrom

Read the whole story at: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1556944/linux-saves-aussie-electricity

Log in to server.  Be root.
Place source DVD in tray. (Source DVD is the RedHat install DVD).
Execute “mount” command to figure out path to source DVD.

# mount
(examine output to see what the path is)
(in my case, path is /media/RHEL_5.3 i386 DVD)

# cd /media/RHEL_5.3\ i386\ DVD
(the backslashes are to escape the spaces in the pathname)

# du -sh .
(see how much space will be necessary to recreate this DVD on the server hard drive)

# df -h
(examine output and select a filesystem on the hard drive that has sufficient space to recreate the DVD there)
(on my system, I selected /0b)

# mkdir /0b/iso_tree
(create a working directory on your selected filesystem)

# pwd
(make sure you are in the top-level of mounted DVD)

# tar cvf – . | (cd /0b/iso_tree; tar xvpf -)
(recreate the DVD on your hard drive – should take 10 minutes or less)

Validation Check:
# ls -a /0b/iso_tree
(make sure you see a listing for .discinfo file)
————————————————————————
Customize:
———–
# cd /0b/iso_tree/isolinux
# mkdir EXTRAS
(In my case, I create this subdirectory because I’ve written some code in my custom ks.cfg file which will copy the contents of the EXTRAS subdirectory into a directory on the server, in the post-installation steps)
(We want to put the custom ks.cfg file in the ./isolinux directory, as the deployment guide I’m writing for work expects to find the ks.cfg file there.)
(In my case, I have these files on a USB stick which is attached to my server at the mount point /media/disk)
# cp /media/disk/ks.cfg /0b/iso_tree/isolinux/ks.cfg
# cp /media/disk/tools.tar.gz /0b/iso_tree/isolinux/EXTRAS/tools.tar.gz

Here you can make it interesting, because you can actually put multiple versions of ks.cfg here, and can pretty much name them what you want; later when you go to build a new server, you will specify the path to the ks.cfg file anyway.
———————————————————————-
Make the custom ISO image file:
Decide what the ISO image will be called.  In my case, I decided to call it “RedHatLinux53-yyyymmdd.iso”, where yyyymmdd represents the year, month, day that I’m creating the file.

# cd /0b/iso_tree
# mkdir /0b/new_iso
(Here you are creating another working directory to put your custom ISO file in – mine needed a little less than 4Gb)

Now you execute the “mkisofs” command to create the custom ISO file.  This command is all on one line.  You might want to put it in a small shell script and execute it that way to avoid typo errors.

# mkisofs -A “Red Hat Linux 5.3″ -V “Red Hat Linux 5.3″ -J -R -v -T -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o /0b/new_iso/RedHatLinux53-20090901.iso .

(PLEASE NOTE THE “.” at the end of the command – this stands for “current directory”, don’t forget to put this at the end of the command!)
(Should take around 5 minutes to complete)

Validate:
———
Mount the newly created ISO image on the loopback device so you can make sure it will work:

# mkdir /0b/mnt_iso
(here you are creating a mount point)

# mount -o loop /0b/new_iso/RedHatLinux5.3-20090901.iso /0b/mnt_iso
(make sure it mounts ok and you can find isolinux/ks.cfg and isolinux/EXTRAS/tools.tar.gz)

# umount /0b/mnt_iso
—————————————————————————————–
Now at this point you want to write the ISO image to DVD.  Being pressed for time at work, I chose not to investigate the options for using the “cdrecord” command on my Linux server to do that.  Instead, I chose to put the ISO file on a USB stick and transfer it over to my PC, then use Roxio to burn a DVD from the ISO image.  So here are the instructions for doing that:

# cp /0b/new_iso/RedHatLinux5.3-20090901.iso /media/disk
(On a slow server, took around a half hour)
# eject /media/disk

Remove USB stick from server and attach to PC.
Use Roxio.  Use DVD-R, as DVD+R etc. has sometimes caused a problem.  Use option to “Burn Image”.  Choose the option to “Verify”.  (Takes about 20 minutes)

Test DVD:
———
Place DVD in CD tray in the server you want to build.  It should boot from DVD.  At the Linux boot: prompt, type the command which will initiate the install, using the custom ks.cfg found at isolinux/ks.cfg.

On my server, the path to the DVD is /dev/sda1, so this is the boot command I use:
boot: linux ks=sda1:/isolinux/ks.cfg
(NOTE: you don’t have to type “boot:” that is the prompt you will see.)

If all goes well, the installation will carry on and you won’t be prompted for anything.

There are so many things I want to learn about, that I didn’t have time to look at until now.  Just trying to see how much I can learn before I go back to work.

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