RHEL 5.4

I'm trying to use %include statements in my kickstarts, and am running into some problems.

In %pre, I can %include /mnt/source/isolinux/setup-questions and that works just fine. One of the things it does is echo out several variables to /tmp/vars In %post --nochroot, I copy /tmp/vars to /mnt/sysimage/tmp/vars so I can access /tmp/vars in %post That works just fine.

The problem is when I try to include files I've copied to /tmp In %pre, I can copy my include files to /tmp/ks-files/, and I've verified that they are, indeed, copied. The files exist, are readable, have the correct content. But if, in %pre, I %include /tmp/ks-files/setup-questions, kickstart simple sails right on past. In %post, again, I can drop to a shell and see that /tmp/ks-files/* are all there, but the first %include bombs out with an error about the file not existing.

What's the secret to getting this to work?

Hi jnojr,

I think that the %include tags are interpreted before the initialisation of the chroot environment, that is used inside the %pre and %post sections. This means that the paths of the files should be the paths on the "server" and not the path on the host where it is being installed. Or you should use a web URL of the "text" files to include.

Quote:

I do believe they are parsed before the kickstart is actually run.

But that doesn't help me to understand why they the %include lines will not see files which do exist and are readable. I can %include a file on the DVD in %pre, before there is a filesystem to chroot to, but if I copy the file to /tmp (which is a ramdisk, but that shouldn't really matter) it can no longer be "seen", and the kickstart bombs out.

Anyone?

Quote:
I don't use kickstart much but can't understand why what you describe should not work; however, perhaps you are not getting more help because:

1. This forum is for CentOS and not RHEL.

2. 5.4 is extremely obsolete and thus unsupported. CentOS 5.8 is the current version, and RHEL is at the same release level.