Kickstart

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, psema4 wrote:

> I suppose this is relatively straight-forward.  If there's anything
> here that'll b0rk the install process I'd sure appreciate hearing
> about it.  Also, any gotchas about using Kickstart?  Anything in
> particular to watch out for?  TIA

I've setup Kickstart and also Jumpstart (Solaris) a few times.  I can't 
think of any one that will jump out and bite you from behind a tree.  I 
would say setting these sorts of things up is not hard but it can be 
involved.  This is particularly true when you get into things pxe, tftp 
(some versions chroot, others don't) and bootparamd (if you need it).
 
> (btw, this project is meant for business kiosks, not public ones you
> might see at a mall or library, so I'm taking short cuts the first
> time through.  There are a couple packages not locked down by this
> ks.cfg snippet - like X handling of ctl-alt-backspace.  I just don't

If you're using a display manager than a ctrl-alt-bksp should just restart 
the display manager and throw the user back to a graphical login prompt 
(or back into a session if this is how it has been configured).

This is a good thing IMHO.  It gives the user a way out if the X session 
gets very b0rked (short of X skewing the video registers).  Remember too 
the X server can crash on its own so you really want it to restart and 
bring the display manager back up regardless of how it is killed.

> have the time to go and find all the trouble spots then how to fix 'em
> from kickstart just yet.  It has been terribly educational though.)

Choosing a window manager which lets you lock everything down and then 
proceeding to do so is a good plan.  You could go for chroots, virtual 
boxes, etc, if you were really paranoid about the environment.

Rob

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