CentOS virt - Jul 2015 - How to kickstart a guest with Centos 6.6 & Xen 4.4

Hello,

I posted a question over at xenproject.org but it was recommended that I
send out a message here for help.

My post there:
http://www.xenproject.org/help/questions-and-answers/vanilla-pv-centos-guest-via-kickstart-centos-6-6,-xen-4-4.html

The TL;DR is: Everything I've found to kickstart a new vanilla rhel/centos
guest points to specifying a kernel & and initrd- for RHEL/Centos 5. But
where is the xen initrd for Centos 6? The Xen4Quickstart instructions are
awesome, but after install you are left with a kernel and an initramfs & no
initrd for a centos 6 guest in xen.

So is there a better way to kickstart a fresh/vanilla VM post
Xen4Quickstart instructions? Shall I build an initrd from the initramfs
(and how) or is there another way?

Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere, but if it is I have yet to find
it and I've been looking around for some time.

Thank you!
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On 07/30/2015 05:29 AM, Elliot Fox wrote:
> The TL;DR is: Everything I've found to kickstart a new vanilla
rhel/centos guest points to specifying a kernel & and initrd- for
RHEL/Centos 5. But
> where is the xen initrd for Centos 6? The Xen4Quickstart instructions are
awesome, but after install you are left with a kernel and an initramfs & no
> initrd for a centos 6 guest in xen.
> 
> So is there a better way to kickstart a fresh/vanilla VM post
Xen4Quickstart instructions? Shall I build an initrd from the initramfs (and
how) or is
> there another way?

If you want do a kickstart install using the PXE initrd.img, use the matching
PXE vmlinuz. Generally speaking, don't mix and match kernel and
initramfs versions and assume it will work even if they're from the same
major release.

Where to find the kickstart file needs to be specified in the normal way
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-startinginstall.html

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Elliot Fox <elliotnfox at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I posted a question over at xenproject.org but it was recommended that I
> send out a message here for help.
>
> My post there:
>
http://www.xenproject.org/help/questions-and-answers/vanilla-pv-centos-guest-via-kickstart-centos-6-6,-xen-4-4.html
>
> The TL;DR is: Everything I've found to kickstart a new vanilla
rhel/centos
> guest points to specifying a kernel & and initrd- for RHEL/Centos 5.
But
> where is the xen initrd for Centos 6? The Xen4Quickstart instructions are
> awesome, but after install you are left with a kernel and an initramfs
& no
> initrd for a centos 6 guest in xen.
>
> So is there a better way to kickstart a fresh/vanilla VM post
Xen4Quickstart
> instructions? Shall I build an initrd from the initramfs (and how) or is
> there another way?
>
> Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere, but if it is I have yet to find
it
> and I've been looking around for some time.
I've found this helpful:

http://grantmcwilliams.com/tech/virtualization/xen-howtos/393-centos-6-virtual-machine-64-bit-installation-on-xen

A couple of changes you have to make though:  you have to take out the
"bootloader=pygrub" line in his config file.

But we probably should have something like that on the wiki page --
thanks for asking about it. :-)

 -George