The previous post showed the kickstart file generated using a minimal installation on my Thinkpad W530.  It’s this base kickstart file which we’ll update and customise, in much the same way as we would do if we were working on the target machine.

I typically install the following packages via yum:

sysstat
conky
autofs
simple-mtpfs
critical-path-kde

Apart from conky and simple-mtpfs all of those applications are fairly generic.  As such I was hoping that they would be available on the Fedora installation DVD.  So, I first updated the packages section of the kickstart file like this:


%packages
@core
sysstat
conky
autofs
simple-mtpfs
@critical-path-kde


However, this kickstart file resulted in errors stating that the packages could not be found.

On an installed Fedora 19 system, I could see these packages came from either the “updates” repository or from a repository called “fedora”.


# yum list sysstat conky autofs simple-mtpfs
autofs.x86_64        1:5.0.7-28.fc19                @updates
conky.x86_64         1.9.0-4.20121101gitbfaa84.fc19 @fedora
simple-mtpfs.x86_64  0.1-6.fc19                     @fedora
sysstat.x86_64       10.1.5-1.fc19                  @fedora


I then came across the following links:

Anaconda/Kickstart – repo usage

Red Hat Bugzilla 979154 – Fedora 19 RC2 kickstart with “repo –name=fedora” crashes

Fedora 19 Common Bugs – Problems with Installation Source and Installation Destination spokes when installing from a partially complete kickstart

This first link states that “By default, anaconda has a configured set of repos taken from /etc/anaconda.repos.d plus a special Installation Repo in the case of a media install. The exact set of repos in this directory changes from release to release and cannot be listed here. There will likely always be a repo named “updates”.

I had another look on the DVD and sure enough those packages were not listed. So, what I actually needed to do was enable these extra repositories in the kickstart file.

Here’s what the updated sections of the kickstart file will look like:


# Use network installation
url --url="http://192.168.105.1/os/fedora/19/Fedora-19-x86_64-DVD"
repo --name=fedora-kickstart --baseurl=http://192.168.105.1/os/fedora/19/Fedora-19-x86_64-DVD
# Need fedora so we can pull down things like sysstat
repo --name=fedora
# Use this to get full updates
repo --name=updates


The updated kickstart file will cause the installer to use these extra repositories and use them when it gets to the %packages section of the kickstart file.  In this manner, it will also pull down updates to the O/S from the Internet using the “updates” repository.