How to get CentOS 6 kickstart to ask for hostname?

Question

I'm using the CentOS 6 netinstall ISO with some kickstart files on an http server. When the ISO boots I hit TAB and enter the boot options asknetwork ks=http://<ip-address>/path/to/kickstart.ks.

My kickstart files do not have a network parameter, so it should be prompting. When I leave out asknetwork it tries to use DHCP. With asknetwork it only prompts for IP information.

Unfortunately anaconda is hell bent on automatically discovering the hostname, which ends up being a reverse DNS lookup of the IP, or localhost.localdomain if nothing was found.

Is there a way to make anaconda prompt for the hostname, or some way to pre-enter it through a custom boot option?

There used to be network --bootproto=query for CentOS 5, but this no longer works in 6.

_There used to be network --bootproto=query for CentOS 5, but this no longer works in 6._ It is still there, and it works (I used it a few weeks ago). The trick seems to be that if the Kernel passes on any network information to Anaconda, then `--bootproto-query` will silently be ignored. — Stefan Lasiewski, Jan 28 '13 at 23:00

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '12 at 19:16

4

I set the hostname in the kickstart file directly.

If you're trying to reuse the same template, you could get creative and use a bit of PHP to pass something to the installer. Kickstart files are http, so you could do something like:

ks=http://repo.brazzers.com/ks/kickstart.php?hostname=kitty

...where kitty is a variable in the kickstart file that populates the --hostname= parameter

Or the better route is to use a more robust provisioning framework like Cobbler.

answered Oct 23 '12 at 19:16

ewwhite

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You naughty man! :-) – Andrew Smith Oct 23 '12 at 19:29
Why not simply pass "myname=kitty" and parse /proc/cmdline in the %post-section of kickstart? – Nils Oct 24 '12 at 19:46
I was thinking of PHP in the context of a larger solution. I prefer [Cobbler](http://cobbler.github.com/), regardless. – ewwhite Oct 24 '12 at 20:02

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 13 '15 at 15:35

I prefer this method using bash:

%include /tmp/network.txt

%pre
#!/bin/sh
exec < /dev/tty3 > /dev/tty3 2>&1
chvt 3
hn=""

while [ "$hn" == "" ]; do
 clear
 echo " *** Please enter the following details: *** "
 echo
 read -p "Hostname: " hn
done
clear
chvt 1
echo "network --device eth0 --bootproto static --noipv6 --hostname ${hn}" > /tmp/network.txt

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 07 '12 at 19:10

I was trying to do this with virt-install and found a blog article with an excellent solution to this. The solution uses the /proc/cmdlines passed to the kernel at boot time to extract a hostname using a pre kickstart section and write a temporary file that is then included in the main kickstart section.

http://monzell.com/post/15547967527/automatically-set-the-hostname-during-kickstart

The blog was for kickstarting VMs in KVM. But I don't see any reason this wouldn't work in any other kickstart scenario where you can pass the kernel boot arguments easily.

How to get CentOS 6 kickstart to ask for hostname?

3 Answers3