online update after autoinstallation

openSUSE 11.1 will allow you to run an online update at the end of the installation. All you have to do is to set the boolean value do_online_update in the software section to true. That makes only sense if an online update repository is available and so you should configure the suse_register part in the profile too. suse_register will add an online repository automatically. If the online update source has been added via add-on section in your profile, then you don't need to do the online update because autoyast has installed the latest packages during stage 1 already.
If a kernel update gets installed during that online update, a reboot at the end of stage 2 is triggered too.
Here is the official documentation.

Issues with the bnx2 network device driver

on SLES10 SP2 the bnx2 driver has the problem, that it takes ages (up to 60s) for it to raise up the network device. Until then, no network is available. That can disturb the automatic installation. First of all, if your installation source is on a network device, YaST can not connect that installation source. That issue was fixed for SP2 (see bugzilla).
Still there are problems when you have init-scripts with a <location> that requires network (like HTTP, FTP,...) because after configuring the network device by autoyast, it takes another 60 seconds to raise the device and the <location> is evaluated after the network configuration. As a workaround you have to add an inline post-script that waits for 60 seconds:

<scripts>
<post-scripts config:type="list">
  <script>
      <network_needed config:type="boolean">false</network_needed>
      <filename>wait.sh</filename>
      <interpreter>shell</interpreter>
      <source><![CDATA[
sleep 60
]]>
      </source>
    </script>
</post-scripts>
<init-scripts config:type="list">
    <script>
      <location>http://.....</location>
      ...
    </script>
</init-scripts>
</scripts>

that script will wait 60 seconds and then network should be available and the remote init-scripts can be fetched.

If you need network in your init-script too, then you have to wait again for 60 seconds or so in your init-script.

I know, that sucks but the driver is broken and the description above is just a workaround for a broken network device driver.

Proposallist with openSUSE 11.1

with openSUSE 11.1 you can configure the proposal screen that is shown when you set the confirm option to true or you pass y2confirm on the linuxrc commandline. So you can hide all proposal except for the language selection and the software selection for example.

  <general>
    <mode>
      <confirm config:type="boolean">true</confirm>
    </mode>
    ...
    <proposals config:type="list">
      <proposal>country_simple_proposal</proposal>
      <proposal>software_proposal</proposal>
    </proposals>
  </general>

post-packages broken in openSUSE 11.0

the <post-packages config:type="list"> section got broken on openSUSE 11.0.
The reason is a client that was deactivated because since the second stage was dropped from the manual installation, that client was not needed anymore - for the manual installation but AutoYaST has been overlooked and there it's still needed.
Fortuantely there are workarounds. You can install the packages via script (post-script with "network_needed=true should do the job or even an init-script) or you can change the control.xml file on the root of the installation source (that's not your autoyast XML profile. It's really a file called control.xml on the installation source of openSUSE 11.0).
Around line 1059 there is a line like this:
<name>rpmcopy_secondstage</name>
change that line to
<name>rpmcopy</name>

configure the running system

With the AutoYaST UI of 11.1 you can write the settings of the profile you are working on to the currently running system. Of course only second stage configuration can be written so partitioning for example can't be done.
You can write the config of each single module (like only the sysconfig module for example) with the new "write to system" button or ...
... you can apply the complete profile to the running system with the "Apply profile to this system" option in the file menu.

if you want to do that on command line instead of using the UI, you can use the ayast_setup client.