Table of Contents
These are the boot options that are useful when starting Anaconda. For more information on using Anaconda options, refer to "Appendix A. Boot Options" in the Fedora Installation Guide.
Anaconda bootup is handled by dracut, so most of the kernel arguments handled
by dracut are also valid. See dracut.kernel(7) for details on those options.
Throughout this guide, installer-specific options are prefixed with
inst. (e.g. inst.ks). The inst prefix is optional; ks still works
just fine. The inst prefix may be required in a future release.
An installable tree is a directory structure containing installer images, packages, and repodata. [1]
Usually this is either a copy of the DVD media (or loopback-mounted DVD
image), or the <arch>/os/ directory on the Fedora mirrors.
This gives the location of the Install Source - that is, the place where the installer can find its images and packages. It can be specified in a few different ways:
inst.repo=cdrom
inst.repo=cdrom:<device>
inst.repo=hd:<device>:<path>
inst.repo=[http,https,ftp]://<host>/<path>
inst.repo=nfs:[<options>:]<server>:/<path>
Mount the given NFS server and path. Uses NFS version 3 by default.
You can specify what version of the NFS protocol to use by adding nfsvers=X
to the options.
Disk devices may be specified with any of the following forms:
/dev/sda1, sdb2
LABEL=FLASH, LABEL=Fedora, CDLABEL=Fedora\x2017\x20x86_64
UUID=8176c7bf-04ff-403a-a832-9557f94e61db
Non-alphanumeric characters should be escaped with \xNN, where
NN is the hexidecimal representation of the character (e.g. \x20 for
the space character (' ').
Give the location of a kickstart file to be used to automate the install. Uses
the same formats as inst.repo.
If <path> is omitted, /ks.cfg is assumed.
If inst.ks is used without a value, the installer will look for
nfs:<next_server>:/<filename>:
<next_server> is the DHCP "next-server" option, or the IP of the DHCP server itself,
<filename> is the DHCP "filename" option, or /kickstart/, and
/, <ip>-kickstart is added
example:
192.168.122.1
client address: 192.168.122.100
nfs:192.168.122.1:/kickstart/192.168.122.100-kickstart
Add headers to outgoing HTTP requests which include the MAC addresses of all network interfaces. The headers are of the form:
X-RHN-Provisioning-MAC-0: eth0 01:23:45:67:89:ab
This is helpful when using inst.ks=http... to provision systems.
Add a header to outgoing HTTP requests which includes the system’s serial number. [2] The header is of the form:
X-System-Serial-Number: <serial>
Initial network setup is handled by dracut. For detailed information consult
the "Network" section of dracut.kernel(7).
The most common dracut network options are covered here, along with some installer-specific options.
Configure one (or more) network interfaces. You can use multiple ip
arguments to configure multiple interfaces, but if you do you must specify an
interface for every ip= argument, and you must specify which interface
is the primary boot interface with bootdev.
Accepts a few different forms; the most common are:
ip=<dhcp|dhcp6|auto6|ibft>
ip=dhcp if network is required by inst.repo, inst.ks, inst.updates,
etc.
ip=<interface>:<autoconf>
ip=eth0:dhcp.
ip=<ip>::<gateway>:<netmask>:<hostname>:<interface>:none
Bring up the given interface with a static network config, where:
<ip>
[2001:DB8::1].
<gateway>
<netmask>
255.255.255.0) or prefix (e.g. 64).
<hostname>
ip=<ip>::<gateway>:<netmask>:<hostname>:<interface>:<autoconf>
Bring up the given interface with the given autoconf method, but override the automatically obtained IP/gateway/etc. with the provided values.
Technically all of the items are optional, so if you want to use dhcp but also
set a hostname you can do ip=::::<hostname>::dhcp.
ifname=<interface>:<MAC>
Set the DHCP vendor class identifier. (ISC dhcpd will see this value as
"option vendor-class-identifier").
Defaults to anaconda-$(uname -srm). [3]
This is a kernel option that specifies what device to use as the primary
console. For example, if your console should be on the first serial port, use
console=ttyS0.
You can use multiple console= options; boot message will be displayed on
all consoles, but anaconda will put its display on the last console listed.
Using this option implies text.
Set the language to be used during installation. This should be a language
that’s valid for use with the lang kickstart command.
Set the keyboard layout to use. This should be something valid for use with
the keyboard kickstart command.
Force command line install mode. This mode simply prints out text and does not allow any interaction. All options must be specified in a kickstart or on the command line.
Force the installer to use a very limited text-based UI. Unless you’re using a kickstart this probably isn’t a good idea; you should use VNC instead.
Run the installer GUI in a VNC session. You will need a VNC client application to interact with the installer. VNC sharing is enabled, so multiple clients may connect.
A system installed with VNC will start in text mode (runlevel 3).
Consider setting a vnc password (see below).
Specify that the machine being installed onto doesn’t have any display hardware, and that anaconda shouldn’t bother looking for it.
Specify the X driver that should be used during installation and on the installed system.
Use the framebuffer X driver (fbdev) rather than a hardware-specific driver.
Equivalent to inst.xdriver=fbdev.
Run the rescue environment. This is useful for trying to diagnose and fix broken systems.
Give the location of an updates.img to be applied to the installer runtime.
Takes the same arguments as inst.repo and inst.ks.
If no <path> is given, /updates.img is assumed.
inst.loglevel=<debug|info|warning|error|critical>
info.
inst.syslog=<host>[:<port>]
Once installation is running, send log messages to the syslog process on the given host. The default port is 514 (UDP).
Requires the remote syslog process to accept incoming connections.
Forward logs through the named virtio port (a character device at
/dev/virtio-ports/<name>). A port named org.fedoraproject.anaconda.log.0
will be used by default, if found.
+ For more information see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Logging.
Normally, if the information needed by a given installer screen has
already been provided, the installer will skip that screen (for example, if
you specify lang=en, the language screen is skipped.)
This option forces the installer to display those screens briefly before stepping through to the next one.
This is mostly used with the autoscreenshot kickstart command to get
automated screenshots of the installer.
Use inst.debug=1 to add a "debug" button to the UI, which allows dropping
into a Python debugger.
Intentionally raise an exception to make the installer crash with a traceback. This is for testing our crash-handling code. Don’t use it unless you want the installer to crash.
These options should still be accepted by the installer, but they’re deprecated and may be removed soon.
The difference between an installable tree and a dir with an .iso file is
autodetected, so this is the same as inst.repo=nfs:…
Use nameserver instead. Note that nameserver does not take comma-separated
lists; just use multiple nameserver options.
These can be provided as part of the ip option.
These options are obsolete and have been removed.
Anaconda’s initramfs is now is completely non-interactive, so these have been removed.
This option was never intended for public use; it was supposed to be used to
force anaconda to use /dev/ttyS0 as its console when testing it on a live
machine.
Use console=ttyS0 or similar instead. See console for details.
This was used to debug loader, so it has been removed. There are plenty of
options for debugging dracut-based initramfs - see the dracut "Troubleshooting" guide.
All this option actually did was set TERM=vt100. The default TERM setting
works fine these days, so this was no longer necessary.
These options are not present in Fedora 17 but will return in a future version.