CentOS - Oct 2008 - "core" installs of 5.2 missing crucial packages like yum, selinux-policy-targeted, vim-minimal, etc.

I had a 5.0 kickstart server which did "core" installs of 
CentOS (i.e.: "%packages --nobase").

I recently setup a 5.2 kickstart server. Using the same 
kickstart configs, I notice a few packages are always 
missing, notably: yum (!!), selinux-policy-targeted (even 
though I have "selinux --enforcing" in the kickstart, it 
always ends up with that package missing and selinux 
disabled), vim-minimal, etc.

Looking at comps.xml for 5.2 os tree, it shows all of these 
packages in the "core" group, just like 5.0 does. So it's 
not that the "core" group has changed.

Looking at the Release Notes for 5.2, I see this entry:

"Kickstart scripts that worked for 5.0 and/or 5.1 may have 
issues on CentOS 5.2 installation trees. So first test your 
kickstart scripts with CentOS 5.2 before using them in 
production."

I'm guessing this has something to do with my problem, but 
there's no further details.

Does anyone have any insight into the above Release Notes 
entry, and/or my problem in general?

p.s. I setup a 2nd kickstart server in a completely 
different environment, and am still seeing the same issue. 
I'm about to try a CD-based install of 5.2 and see if that 
also has the issue.

johnn

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 15:34, Johnny Tan <linuxweb at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I had a 5.0 kickstart server which did "core" installs of CentOS
(i.e.:
> "%packages --nobase").
IMHO, that's a very bad idea. Unless your diskspace is very very tight
(in which case you should probably look into DSL or another
distribution made for that purpose), why would you want to install
CentOS without the "base" packages?

All machines that I've seen that have been installed with --nobase are
crippled. Some programs and mainly scripts just don't work, because
they need to run some utility that is not installed.

Consider removing the --nobase and, if there are packages you would
like to remove from base and you're positive that it's safe to do it,
use -packagename.

Filipe

Johnny Tan wrote on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:34:29 -0400:
> I had a 5.0 kickstart server which did "core" installs of 
> CentOS (i.e.: "%packages --nobase").
And you have a @core in there as well?

Kai

-- 
Kai Sch?tzl, Berlin, Germany
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