Oracle VM for X86 / RHEL PVM Kickstart Installation without DHCP

Just a quick and short post to share a tip related to installation of RHEL as ParaVirtual Machine using kickstart(or any distribution that can use kickstart) on Oracle VM 3 for X86 without having to rely on a DHCP for the Network Parameters. The only prerequisite that is needed is to have kickstart file and RHEL Installation Path available on the network and reachable from Oracle VM Manager Server.

Once that's done, we create our Virtual Server as usual, except that for Network Path, we're having to add more parameters. Indeed we can use the --args to add any parameters we're willing to pass to the kernel. So, we're having something like :

--args kernel_boot_paramaters http://install_server/rhel6_4

For example, let's say that my kickstart file is located on an http server and accessible via http://install_server/my_kickstart.ks, I also need to set 192.169.0.10 as IP of eth1 interface in order to get access to this kickstart file's URL and the RHEL installation tree is http://install_server/rhel6_4. Then, i'll have the following:

--args "ks=http://install_server/my_kickstart.ks ip=192.169.0.10 ksdevice=eth1 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.169.0.1" http://install_server/rhel6_4

Note that the --args section are in quote, this is needed to clearly draw the boundary between what is kernel arguments and the installation tree's URL.