Chapter 4. Configuration and Installation Options

Table of Contents

1. General Options
2. Reporting
3. The Boot loader
4. Partitioning
4.1. Automated Partitioning
4.2. Advanced Partitioning features
4.3. Using existing mount table (fstab)
4.4. Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
4.5. Software RAID
5. Software
5.1. Package Selections
5.2. Custom Package Selections
5.3. Installing additional and customized Packages
5.4. Kernel packages
5.5. Removing automatically selected packages
6. Services and Run-levels
7. Network configuration
7.1. Network devices, DNS and Routing.
7.2. Proxy
7.3. (X)Inetd
7.4. NIS
7.5. LDAP client
7.6. NFS Client and Server
7.7. NTP Client
8. Mail Configuration (Sendmail or Postfix)
9. Security settings
9.1. Password Settings Options
9.2. Boot Settings
9.3. Login Settings
9.4. New user settings (useradd settings)
10. Monitor and X11 Configuration
11. Users
12. Custom user scripts
13. System variables (Sysconfig)
14. Adding complete configurations
15. Miscellaneous hardware and system components
15.1. Printer
15.2. Sound devices

This chapter introduces important parts of a control file for standard purposes. To have an idea about the other options available, use the configuration management system.

Note that for some of the configuration options to work, additional packages have to be installed, depending on the software selection you have configured. If you choose to install Minimal then some packages might be missing and those have to be added to the individual package selection.

YaST will install packages required by YaST modules in the second phase of the installation and before the post-installation phase of AutoYaST has started, however if the YaST modules are not available in the system, this will not happen. For example, no security settings will be configured if yast2-security is not installed.

1.  General Options

This is a required section of the profile. General options include all the settings related to the installation process and the environment of the installed system. Among others it includes the following 4 properties which are required: language, keyboard, clock and mouse almost for any installation. If left out, default values will be used, which might not be in one hand with what you want.

Example 4.1. General Options

  
  <install>

    <general>
      <clock>
	<hwclock>UTC</hwclock>              
	<timezone>US/Eastern</timezone>	
      </clock>
      <keyboard>
	<keymap>german</keymap>              
      </keyboard>
      <language>de_DE</language>
      <mode>                
	<confirm config:type="boolean">true</confirm>
	<forceboot config:type="boolean">false</forceboot>  
      </mode>
      <mouse>
	<device>/dev/psaux</device>     
	<id>ps0</id>	
      </mouse>
    </general>

  </install>

	  
	

By default, the auto-installation process has to be confirmed by the user. The confirmation should be disabled if a fully unattended installation is desired. This option is used to view and change the settings on a target system before anything is committed and can be used for debugging. It is set to true by default to avoid recursive installs when the system schedules a reboot after initial system setup.

[Note]Change starting from SUSE Linux 9.1/SLES 9

The reboot property in the mode resource was used to force a reboot after initial system setup and before the system is booted for the first time. Currently after initial installation all systems must boot, which makes this option obsolete.

[Note]SLES9 Only Options

In SLES 9, it is possible to halt the system after the initial installation phase using the boolean property halt