Sir: Please remove my name and email address from your list. It is 
sent by error. Thank you.

On 1/14/2016 2:37 PM, David Sommerseth wrote:
> On 14/01/16 15:21, Loris Bennett wrote:
>> Hi Benjamin,
>>
>> Benjamin Lefoul <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I am actually interested in the automated install topic (currently
>>> taking place in the other discussion, but I don't want to feed the
>>> troll so I'll start a new one).
>>>
>>> Someone just mentioned Cobbler, and the fact that it's RH's baby. Is
>>> this in any way linked to the recent acquisition of Ansible ?  In
>>> fact, I never really understood what Ansible was, and does it have its
>>> place in automated install? Can it replace Kickstart?
>>>
>>> As you can see I am pretty naive about the topic...
>> I don't know very much about kickstart
> As a rough crash-course .... checkout /root/anaconda-ks.cfg on a freshly
> installed system.  If you want to do the exact same installation once
> more, you copy this file to a medium or web server and provide the URI
> to this file on the kernel command line before starting the installer.
> If anaconda picks it up, you'll have an automated install running instantly.
>
> A more comprehensive guide on kickstart can be found here:
> <https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Installation_Guide/chap-kickstart-installations.html>
>
>> but am currently using ansible to
>> set up two administration servers for a test cluster.  My meagre
>> understanding is that kickstart is mainly aimed at the initial
>> lower-level installation (partitioning the disk, installing the base OS
>> and other packages, ...).
> Correct.  Ansible is more for further automated setup tasks after the
> core OS has been installed and is ready for the network.
>
> Especially if you're playing with virtualization or containers,
> cloud-init might be another useful tool to prepare images when using
> image cloning.  In some cases it might be useful for bare-metal installs
> too, but it isn't network based.  If 100% network capable setup is
> required, ansible is a better alternative.
>
> To start an install without anything else than a local network, PXE boot
> can help out.  I've done that at home, that was a fairly straight
> forward process.  Bascally you configure the dhcp server to provide PXE
> details for computers booting of the network.  Then you need to
> configure a tftp server which provides a boot menu/configuration and
> boot kernels.  I did that without involving cobbler.  Cobbler might be
> beneficial in some setups, but haven't dug deep into that.
>
> How to get ready for network installs can be found here:
> <https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Installation_Guide/chap-installation-server-setup.html>
>
>