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Auto Install for Mandrakelinux</TH></TR><TR>
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<H1 CLASS="western"><A NAME="Anatomy_of_the_auto_instcfg_File"></A>Anatomy
of the 'auto_inst.cfg' File</H1>
<P CLASS="western">The automated installation feature of DrakX is
controlled by the contents of a file named 'auto_inst.cfg'. This
file is generally located on the boot floppy diskette that you create
manually, at the end of the initial installation process, or using
the Mandrake Control Center (drakconf) or drakautoinst from an
installed system. However, it can also be located in a sub-directory
of the method installation source media (see the section <A HREF="section6.html#The_auto_instcfg_File_Location"><B><I>The
'auto_inst.cfg' File Location</I></B></A>).</P>
<P CLASS="western">The contents of the auto_inst.cfg file are
comprised of a Perl Scalar Structure declaration (o). The
declaration $o = {...}; is used by the DrakX program to preset
various options and selections. Within the opening/closing braces
are a series of simple and/or compound declarations (representing
your selections).</P>
<P CLASS="western">During a manual install, the various declarations
are created and the appropriate fields filled in as you made choices
from the various screens. Then when you created the Automated or
Replay diskette, selected portions of this structure were simply
dumped to a file that will control the actions of DrakX when an
Automated or Replay install is done.
</P>
<P CLASS="western">An Automated Install requires that all the choices
be pre-selected using either the file generated by the install
program or, manually by you. Me, I am a bit lazy so I generate an
initial diskette at the end of the install or using drakautoinst,
then modify it to suit my requirements.</P>
<P CLASS="western">The remainder of this section describes the
options available for the o$ declaration.
</P>
<P CLASS="western">As always, if you want the gory details regarding
how and what, look on the CD-ROM (or installation source media) in
the directory Mandrake/mdkinst/usr/bin/perl-install for the actual
perl modules. MandrakeSoft has made the DrakX installer code
available for public inspection via their CVS repository (see
<A HREF="http://www.linux-mandrake.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/"><B><I>http://www.linux-mandrake.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/</I></B></A>).
In addition to the source code, there are a variety of documents and
text files that contain things you may be interested in.</P>
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