This howto will teach you how to use the yast2-firstboot utility. It is responsible for the initial system configuration, and will help your customers to configure the system when they boot it for the first time.
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Step 1. Make sure that the package „yast2-firstboot“ is installed on the system. The firstboot package is not part of any package selection and has to be installed individually.
Step 2. Create an empty file “/etc/reconfig_system”. The file will be deleted when the firstboot configuration is completed. This can be done by using the following command: touch /etc/reconfig_system
Step 3. Enable the firstboot service via the yast-runlevel-editor (see screenshot), or directly by using the command
chkconfig firstboot on
Note: yast2-firstboot expects X to be configured, if it is not, it will automatically start in text mode.
You can customize yast2-firstboot to your needs. Please note that everything explained in this section is optional and not required for yast2-firstboot to run!
Customizing Messages
The utility has standard and translated texts in the default setup. If you want to change those texts, use the firstboot configuration file, /etc/sysconfig/firstboot.
This file lets you change the text of the following dialogs:
To do this, change the values of the respective variables to the full path of a plain or rich text formatted text file. This will give you dialogs with customized text. If the references files are in plain text, they will be shown as such automatically. If they contain any markup language, they will be formatted as rich text.
The default license text shown is taken from the file /var/lib/YaST2/info.txt which is the EULA of the product being installed.
License Action
The variable LICENSE_REFUSAL_ACTION sets the action to be executed if the user does not accept the license. The following options are available:
Release Notes
Use the configuration option FIRSTBOOT_RELEASE_NOTES_PATH to show release notes in the target language. The value of the option should be a path to a directory with files using language dependent naming (RELEASE-NOTES.{language}.rtf). For english, the following file will be needed: RELEASE-NOTES.{language}.rtf. The original release notes for the installed product availabe in /usr/share/doc/release-notes can be used as an example.
Customizing Workflow Components
The default firstboot workflow can be controled using one single file which is a subset of the control.xml file used to control the complete installation. The firstboot control file consists of workflow and proposal configurations and can be used to add or remove configuration screens depending on the end configuration of the system. The file firstboot.xml is installed with the yast2-firstboot package and can be found at the following location:
This file can be modified to match the post installation requirements of the product. In addition to the default and pre-installed components, custom screens canbe added to enable maximal flexiblity during post installation. For more information on the syntax of the control file, see the document titled “Product Installation Control”.
Scripting
You can add scripts to be executed at the end of the firstboot configuration to customize the system depending on user input or the environment of the machine. Scripts should be placed in /usr/share/firstboot/scripts or in a custom location that can be set using the /etc/sysconfig/firstboot configuration file.
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