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In this video let's take a look at Kickstart, specifically the associated configuration file. Kickstart is the method Red Hat uses to automate installations. Whenever you install Red Hat installation commands are automatically stored in the Anaconda dash ks dot cfg file. If you've configured an ideal installation on the current system and have a bunch of identical systems all that are necessary is slight changes to that Kickstart file. Let's read through and analyze a couple different versions of this file and compare them side-by-side, or actually in this case, top and bottom. The directives are straightforward. The first two lines configure an installation. This one configures it from the CD, the other configures it from an NFS server with the noted ip address from the noted shared directory. It's found by the language and keyboard. If you're installing in graphical mode it includes an xconfig directive, which isn't present in either of these configurations because I've installed both of these systems in text mode. The network device directives are different. This one includes a static ip address and ip configuration. This one depends on a dhcp server. Note how the root password is encrypted in the Kickstart file. That makes it a high-value file. If the file ever falls into the hands of a cracker that person with the right equipment and just a few minutes can decipher your password, so keep this file protected. Note how the firewall is enabled. It's open for port 22, which corresponds to the secure shell, the compound method for remote administration. The authconfig directive documents the implementation of the shadow password suite, and md5 encryption for passwords. Security enhanced Linux is set enforcing mode. We have the time zone. I'm on the west coast of the U.S., the bootloader is written to the master bootrecord of the main drive. Now note the directives associated with different partitions. First, the partition directives, by default, are commented out with these comment characters. I've actually taken out some of the comment characters, and if you want to use this as your Kickstart file, you'll want to take out all of the comment characters assuming you want the identical configuration. The clearpart directive clears the current partition table, either for all partitions or, in this case, just Linux partitions. The various part directives specify how you're going to format the file system associated with the certain directory. You can specify the size as well as the location. Physical volumes can be specified as well as volume groups, and logical volumes with appropriate sizes. Note how the formatting only applies to the logical volume. Once you've completed configuring partitions note the package groups. These are nonstandard package groups, which are included in the installation process. You can add or delete more as desired. To review, to prepare the Kickstart file for the purpose of this course we assumed that we're preparing a Kickstart file for a system with the identical configuration and to make that work we have to uncomment partition-related directives.