Create Boot Configuration with Kickstart

In addition to providing content for distros, repos based on RHEL-family ISO images can also be used to kickstart locally installed compute nodes. To prepare a kickstart configuration, create a boot configuration that references the repo directly:

scyld-bootctl create name=Rocky8boot repo=Rocky8repo kickstart=basic.ks

The resulting boot configuration will automatically locate the kernel and initramfs on the ISO and default to using no image:

[cwadmin@virthead]$ scyld-bootctl -i Rocky8boot ls -l
Boot Configurations
  Rocky8boot
    image: none
    initramfs: repo:images/pxeboot/initrd.img
    kernel: repo:images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
    kickstart: basic.ks
    last_modified: 2023-01-31 23:27:08 UTC (0:00:13 ago)
    name: Rocky8boot
    release: 4.18.0-425.3.1.el8.x86_64
    repo: Rocky8repo

Initially this boot configuration can be used to boot a disked node with the live boot style assigned either by the boot configuration boot_style field or a _boot_style node attribute. When live booting a node, the cluster administrator will need to access the node's console to proceed through the operating system installation steps. To use the serial-over-lan BMC feature, the administrator may need to provide an appropriate console= cmdline, e.g.:

scyld-bootctl -i Rocky8boot update cmdline=console=ttyS0,115200

The specific details of the console and other command line arguments depend on the target hardware and are beyond the scope of this document. Once the installation process is complete, the compute node should use a next boot style in order to skip the PXE boot process and instead boot from the next boot device. Cluster administrators are encouraged to configure the BIOS of locally installed compute nodes to attempt PXE boot first and then boot from the local disk so that the next boot style works as intended.