ks.cfg location

[BenInTx 0]

The following is from Red Hat 9 Manual.

 

"7.8.2. Creating a Kickstart Boot CD-ROM

To perform a CD-ROM-based kickstart installation, the kickstart file must be named ks.cfg and must be located in the boot CD-ROM's top-level directory. Since a CD-ROM is read-only, the file must be added to the directory used to create the image that is written to the CD-ROM. Refer to the Making an Installation Boot CD-ROM section in the Red Hat Linux Installation Guide for instruction on creating a boot CD-ROM; however, before making the file.iso image file, copy the ks.cfg kickstart file to the isolinux/ directory"

 

Why copy the ks.cfg to the isolinux directory? That isn't the way my vendor boot CD is. Would that have an effect on the ks.cfg operation from the CD?

 

Yea, I'm stretching far and wide for answers/guesses.

 

---------------------------

 

On another forum, I was just told (new to me, like many things) the /isolinux directory of the boot CD is the root directory. Perhaps, I'll rework the vendor CD ISO to include a copy of the ks.cfg file in the /isolinux directory and burn a new one.

 

[Edited by BenInTx on 2004-07-30 23:41:57]

 

[martouf 0]

I'm thinking the placement of ks.cfg matters a great deal if isolinux

is being used in one of its emulation modes. When isolinux emulates

a floppy disk, all of the data must fit contiguously into a floppy-sized

region of the CD.

 

If your vendor's disc uses an emulation mode and then puts ks.cfg outside

of the isolinux-emulated floppy disk, then there's no way for the booting

kernel to 'see' the ks.cfg file. You'd know this is happening if the boot

behavior is just like the disc not having a ks.cfg file at all.

 

 

[unna 0]

Quote:

Refer to the Making an Installation Boot CD-ROM section in the Red Hat Linux Installation Guide for instruction on creating a boot CD-ROM; however, before making the file.iso image file, copy the ks.cfg kickstart file to the isolinux/ directory

If you do refer to the Installation Guide, you will find this (section 1.4.2):

Quote:

mkisofs -o file.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -R -J -v -T isolinux/

From the mkisofs man page, you can find that:

Quote:

mkisofs takes a snapshot of a given directory tree, and generates a binary image which will correspond to an ISO9660 or HFS filesystem when written to a block device

What all this take us to is that the final argument to msisofs is, effectively, the path containing the files which will be written at the root level of the CD image. Thus, if ks.cfg is copied into isolinux directory before running mkisofs, it will appear at the root level of the CD.

You can check out this by yourself, mounting the CD image before burning it into a physical CD:

[tt]mkdir aDirectory[/tt]
[tt]mount -t iso9660 -o loop file.iso aDirectory/[/tt]
[tt]cd aDirectory/[/tt]
[tt]ls[/tt]

Will render:

boot.cat initrd.img ks.cfg param.msg splash.lss
boot.msg isolinux.bin memtest rescue.msg TRANS.TBL
general.msg isolinux.cfg options.msg snake.msg vmlinuz

Hope this helps.