Sure:

The kickstart file is a reasonable place to reconfigure some security parameters on the system. The comment_lines and set_config_value function make this easy. Suppose we want to change the minimum password age to a month.

If we want to keep record of the old value:
$comment_lines('/etc/login.defs', 'PASS_MAX_DAYS')

Then to change the actual value:
$set_config_value('/etc/login.defs' ,'PASS_MAX_DAYS', '30')

These will generate the proper perl/sed commands to change or add the configuration value.

Sometimes the kickstart file may need to modify scripts (typically bashrc or gdm Inits). The delete_command function can remove all instances of a bash command:

$delete_command('/etc/gdm/Default/Init', 'exit[ \t]+0').
This was useful for appending content to the script and making sure it gets executed.

copy_over_file and copy_append_file read file content from the server and inline it into the kickstart. The kickstart will then write this content to a destination file on the client, effectively copying a file from the server to the client. The append version appends to the client file instead of replacing it. The copy_files method is a short-hand way of invoking the two file methods repeatedly:

$copy_files([
    ('w', 'etc/samba/smb.conf'),
    ('w', 'etc/audit.rules'),
])

This allows a user to keep a file tree (usually inside of the snippets directory under a 'files' directory) that will be copied onto the clients. Additionally, the content of these files can be templated. For example:

---------etc/issue---------
SNIPPET::banner.txt
-------------------------------

This particular example allows a consistent banner to be applied wherever one is needed. Also, the banner can be changed on a per-profile and per-system basis.

Sometimes there are decisions that the kickstart file cannot make for the deployer. In these cases, we need to make a list of things left for a human to do. The TODO function is a convenience function that adds readability and consistency to kickstart templates:

At the top:
#set global $todofile = '/root/kstodo'

As needed:
$TODO()
Be sure to correct you audit log settings.
EOF

Using just:
echo "Be sure to correct..." >> /root/kstodo
can cause problems. What if > is used accidentally in place of >>? Also, it's easy to forget the filename. was it "ks-todo" or "kstodo"?

set_permissions works similarly in syntax to copy_files. It takes a list of tuples. This method was included to encourage users to keep all their permission settings in one area o the kickstart template:

$set_permissions([
    ('p', 'root', 'root', '700', '/root'),
    ('f', 'root', 'root', '600', '/root', '*'),
    ('r', 'root', 'root', '/etc/cron.*'),
])
The 'p' means, just the one file or directory. 'f' means recurse over files only (it will descend into directories without changing the directories themselves. 'r' means recurse over files and directories. The second, third, and fourth elements are owner, group, and mode, respectively. Pass an empty string '' to any of those to make no change. The fifth element is the file or directory to change. In the case an 'f' is used as the first element, a sixth element is used to further restrict affected filenames.

The includeall method is a cheeseball function (I don't know if should be in there), but it includes all files in a given directory into the template. This allows one directory to contain several miscellaneous templates that can all be slurped into the kickstart.

$includeall('misc')

I hope that clears things up a bit. Remember, the copy_files method and the TODO method still seem broken on my end (for some reason, Cheetah is not substituting them at all).

Anyway, enjoy!

~
Dan

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan@redhat.com> wrote:
Dan Guernsey wrote:
> Fixed some errors in the builtin methods.
>
> There are still some issues with $copy_files and $TODO. I will resolve
> them later this week.
>
> ~
> Dan

Dan,

Thanks for the patches, I'll check it out and do some testing.   Can you
provide some examples of how someone might use each of these functions
and what they might do?

--Michael



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