4. Prerequisites

There are two approaches to a KickStart install - one is to simply copy your KickStart configuration file to a RedHat boot floppy. The other is to use a regular boot floppy and get your KickStart config file off the network.

In both cases, you'll need:

1. Intel (i386) class machines - KickStart appears to only work on these at the time of writing.
2. KickStart config file - we'll talk about this in the next section!
3. RedHat boot disk - preferably from the updates directory, to take advantage of any fixes/driver updates.
4. DNS entries for the IP addresses you'll be using - optional, but will stop the installation from prompting you for your machine's domain name.

If you want to fetch your config file over the network, you'll also need:

1. A BOOTP/DHCP server for the network(s) your machine(s) will be installed on. Some servers will allocate new addresses in a given range automatically, e.g. the CMU BOOTP server with dynamic addressing extensions.
2. On the same machine as the BOOTP server, an NFS server with a copy of the RedHat distribution mounted on it, and the KickStart config file (see next section for naming details) in an NFS exported directory /kickstart.

It may be possible to do without the BOOTP server - this is certainly implied in the KickStart documentation. I've not tried this myself. Likewise, you may be able to install off a CD-ROM rather than an NFS server. If you try either of these, let me know how you get on, so that I can fold your info back into this document.

Note that it's not strictly necessary for the NFS server to hold both the RedHat distribution and the KickStart config file - just makes things a bit simpler to have everything in one place.