How to perform interactive kickstart installation on Red Hat

Kickstart is used to perform an automated installation where no manual intervention would be needed but there are times when we want the end user to fill in some needed details for eg keyboard type, network details etc so kickstart must wait and prompt for these information before the installation is completed.

Here I have written an article to automate a customized DVD installation using kickstart file
How to create customized bootable boot ISO image in RHEL/CentOS 7

Now suppose in the same DVD installation you want the installation to halt and prompt for network.

This can be done using the %pre and %post installation scripts from the kickstart file.

# vim ks.cfg
---
---
---

# Network Information
%include /tmp/network.ks
--
--
--

# Create a %pre section as below
%pre --interpreter=/usr/bin/bash
exec < /dev/tty6 > /dev/tty6 2> /dev/tty6
chvt 6

read -p "Enter INS hostname    : " HOSTNAME
read -p "Enter IP Address      : " IPADDR
read -p "Enter NetMask         : " NETMASK
read -p "Enter Gateway         : " GATEWAY
echo
sleep 1

echo "network --bootproto=static --hostname=$HOSTNAME --device=eth0 --gateway=$GATEWAY --ip=$IPADDR --netmask=$NETMASK --noipv6 --nodns --onboot=on --activate" > /tmp/network.ks

chvt 1
exec < /dev/tty1 > /dev/tty1 2> /dev/tty1
%end

Here we are halting the automated installation, switching to terminal 6 and prompting user for hostname and network details and the same is populated into "/tmp/network.ks"

which is added as in the ks.cfg

%include /tmp/network.ks