Unattended Install of CentOS 6.3 with a USB Key

Here are the steps to create a bootable USB KEY that performs unattended installation of CentOS 6.3

Prerequisites

• I expect that you know what you are doing. Some of the commands provided can destroy your system if they are not used wisely!
• A USB Key with at least 512MB capacity. It will be formatted during the process. Don’t forget to set USBKEY variable correctly. This is very important that you make sure you don’t execute the commands on another disk since it can destroy the data on  your system.
• Download CentOS-6.3-x86_64-minimal.iso (I assume you have downloaded it in ~/Downloads)
• Make sure you have the following commands installed on your system :
• sfdisk
• mkfs.vfat
• grub-install
• sudo (or root login)
• If you want to add driver disk to the initrd.img you will also need :
• cpio
• xz
• sudo
• This procedure have been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Initialize the USB key

In order to be able to boot from the USB key you need to make a bootable partition of type 0xB (FAT 32 C/H/S), other types might work as well, I haven’t tried.

The quickest way to do it is using sfdisk like this :

# modify the variable to suit your situation. BEWARE this is very important,  # if you put the wrong device it can make your system unusable. USBKEY=/dev/sdc printf ";;b;*\n" | sudo sfdisk  ${USBKEY}

You can use -uM with sfdisk to specify the size in megabytes. It’s not relevant here since we are creating only one partition that fills the USB key.

After repartitioning your USB key, you will format it :

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n INSTALL ${USBKEY}1

Install Grub to your USB Key

Create mount point

sudo mkdir /tmp/INSTALL

Mount your USB key

sudo mount ${USBKEY}1 /tmp/INSTALL

Install grub on your USB key

sudo grub-install --force --root-directory=/tmp/INSTALL ${USBKEY}

Create a grub.cfg file

With your favorite editor create /tmp/INSTALL/boot/grub/grub.cfg

set timeout=5 set default=0 menuentry "Install CentOS 6.3" {  linux /vmlinuz ksdevice=eth0 ks=hd:sda1:/ks.cfg --  initrd /initrd.img }

Create a Kickstart file

Create the file /tmp/INSTALL/ks.cfg
This is an example. You should customize your ks.cfg to suit your needs.
Keep in mind that the first harddisk will be sdb, since sda is the usbkey when you are booting.

lang en_US keyboard us timezone America/Montreal rootpw --iscrypted  $1$bZB2mB8q$msVgTjbsA.RSvwiQjmr9R0 auth  --useshadow  --enablemd5 selinux --disabled network --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0 firewall --disabled install harddrive --dir=/ --partition=sda1 # Add some repo if you want (uncomment if needed) #repo --name="EPEL6-x86_64" --baseurl=http://fedora.mirror.nexicom.net/epel/6/x86_64/ #repo --name="PuppetLabs" --baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/x86_64/ url --url http://less.cogeco.net/CentOS/6.3/os/x86_64/ zerombr yes clearpart --all --initlabel bootloader --location=mbr # this is VERY IMPORTANT otherwise your USBKEY will be wiped during install process! ignoredisk --drives=sda # I’ve added fsoptions because I’m installing CentOS on SSD drives. part swap --size 2048 --ondisk=sdb part / --fstype ext4 --size 4096 --ondisk=sdb --fsoptions=discard,noatime,nodiratime part /boot --fstype ext4 --size 512 --ondisk=sdb --fsoptions=discard,noatime,nodiratime part /var --fstype ext4 --size 2048 --grow  --ondisk=sdb --fsoptions=discard,noatime,nodiratime text skipx reboot #customize the packages you want %packages @base git wget ntp openssh-server openssh-clients screen vim

You can change the password hash used in ks.cfg using this command :

openssl passwd -1

Copy files from the ISO

Create mount point

sudo mkdir /tmp/ISO

Mount the iso file

sudo mount -o loop ~/Downloads/CentOS-6.3-x86_64-minimal.iso  /tmp/ISO

Copy the kernel and initrd from the iso

sudo cp /tmp/ISO/isolinux/initrd.img /tmp/INSTALL/ sudo cp /tmp/ISO/isolinux/vmlinuz /tmp/INSTALL/

Copy the images directory from the iso

sudo cp -r /tmp/ISO/images/ /tmp/INSTALL/

Unmount the iso and the usb key

sudo umount /tmp/INSTALL/ sudo umount /tmp/ISO/

Your USB Key is now ready to boot and install CentOS 6.3!

OPTIONAL - Add a driver disk

If  you have specialized hardware, you probably need to add a driver disk during the installation process. The best way to add a driver disk to make an unattended installation is to add it to the root of initrd image with the name dd.img.

Anaconda will load automatically the driver disk during the installation process. Here are the steps recreate the initrd.img with the dd.img

sudo mount -o loop ~/Downloads/CentOS-6.3-x86_64-minimal.iso  /tmp/ISO cd  /tmp/INSTALL/ # the directory should be empty if you followed the instructions. If it's not empty, make sure # you unmounted the /tmp/INSTALL directory. ls # decompress initrd.img xzcat --force /tmp/ISO/isolinux/initrd.img | cpio -ivdum cp WHERE_IS_MY_DRIVER_DISK.img dd.img # recompress initrd.img in /tmp find . -print |cpio -o -H newc | xz --format=lzma > /tmp/initrd.img # clean the directory rm -rf /tmp/INSTALL/* cd /tmp # mount the USBKEY and copy the new initrd.img sudo mount ${USBKEY}1 /tmp/INSTALL sudo cp  /tmp/initrd.img  /tmp/INSTALL # unmount the CD and the USBKEY sudo umount /tmp/INSTALL sudo umount /tmp/ISO