Hi,
I’m trying to make a RockyLinux based ISO which will install specific version of kernel, say 5.4 LTS, automatically. I have figured out a way to to this, see next section. But I still have questions:
- Is it a good idea to replace the kernel related rpms in BaseOS, so the installation will install specific version of kernel by default?
- Are there any other methods to to this?
My way to do this
- Download kernel 5.4 from elrepo.org, and put them in a directory ./localrepo.
- Make a repo with createrepo against ./localrepo directory.
Following is the resulting repo:
tmp/rocky8/
❯ tree localrepo
localrepo
├── Packages
│ ├── kernel-lt-5.4.179-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64.rpm
│ ├── kernel-lt-core-5.4.179-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64.rpm
│ └── kernel-lt-modules-5.4.179-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64.rpm
└── repodata
├── 5078e86eea6133a97495be8f38ac37fb057509fb3cb2c15d602c0acce22388f0-other.xml.gz
├── 52a88a26b19f84b7691d8beeb1d94fbfe983769d69ab9a86f4bec0d4f852dba0-primary.sqlite.bz2
├── c8082299e8d8093dbdbc7d31ce79ecd7b7aecd2ed5908f35795b8f2c6d42e632-filelists.sqlite.bz2
├── ceb4660fa015d54844913e066e130633f36e82386d5ba4e679d89856bb5a7954-other.sqlite.bz2
├── dc209f17d2b7d751f25b937e47d5ed5b576949780652ea756ccf1d27a9123d99-filelists.xml.gz
├── f0ae38968a117cf251220a4aa97a4e4ace55c221deb966ce639a8683e41732fe-primary.xml.gz
└── repomd.xml
2 directories, 10 files
- Extract Rocky Linux 8.5 ISO to ./iso
- Copy the localrepo I just created to ./iso/localrepo/
- Add a kickstart file in ./isolinux/custom.ks:
#version=RHEL8
graphical
cdrom
repo --name="local" --baseurl=file:///run/install/sources/mount-0000-cdrom/localrepo
%packages
@^custom-environment
@standard
kexec-tools
kernel-lt
%end
keyboard --xlayouts='us'
lang en_US.UTF-8
network --hostname=localhost.localdomain
firstboot --enable
ignoredisk --only-use=sda
bootloader --append="crashkernel=auto" --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda
clearpart --all
part / --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=39935
part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=1024
timezone America/New_York --isUtc
rootpw --plaintext rocky
The kernel-lt package is kernel 5.4 LTS version.
- Add an entry to isolinux.cfg:
label custom_linux
menu label ^Install Customize Rocky Linux 8
kernel vmlinuz
append inst.ks=hd:LABEL=Rocky-8-5-x86_64-dvd:/isolinux/custom.ks initrd=initrd.img inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Rocky-8-5-x86_64-dvd quiet
- Create ISO using genisoimage and implantisomd5
The custom_linux entry in isolinux will install kernel (from BaseOS) and kernel-lt (from localrepo) both. After installation, the grub has three entries:
