SYS: Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux automatically using Kickstart.

Kickstart is a method to install automatically (without any manual intervention) a RHEL physical server or a VM guest.
It is based on a configuration file called a KICKSTART file. This file needs to be accessible through HTTP, FTP or NFS.
In this file are defined the various details of the configuration (language, keyboard settings, network configuration, password, selinux status, timezone, and disk organization). See below for an example.

To create a VM called postfix.example.com (here with an IP address of 192.168.1.10, a gateway at 192.168.1.1, a DNS server at 192.168.1.5, Pass1234 as a password, and a total disk size of 5GB), create the ks_postfix.cfg file and add the following lines:

# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.
#version=DEVEL
install
lang en_US
keyboard us
network --onboot yes --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 192.168.1.10 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.1.1 --ipv6 auto --nameserver 192.168.1.5 --hostname postfix.example.com
rootpw Pass1234
firewall --service=ssh
authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha512
selinux --enforcing
timezone --utc America/Los_Angeles
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=vda --append="crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet"
zerombr
text
skipx
part /boot --fstype=ext4 --size=200
part pv.000001 --grow --size=1
volgroup vg_root --pesize=4096 pv.000001
logvol / --fstype=ext4 --name=lv_root --vgname=vg_root --size=3072
logvol swap --name=lv_swap --vgname=vg_root --size=512
%packages
%end
reboot

To get some help to create this file, type:

# yum install -y system-config-kickstart
# system-config-kickstart

For a deeper understanding of the subject, you can look at how to set up a lab.

If you want to encrypt the password, you need to read Hash root’s Password in RHEL and CentOS Kickstart Profiles.