Automate Linux Installations with Debian Pre-Seeding
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Red Hat and its many clones and offspring, like Fedora, CentOS, White Box Linux, and so forth have long had a simple built-in mechanism for cloning installations on diverse hardware: Kickstart. With Kickstart you can easily create a customized configuration, set up an installation server, plug a new PC into the network, and perform an unattended network installation. SUSE has AutoYaST. Debian users have not been so fortunate. FAI, the Fully-Automated Installer, works beautifully when it's set up correctly. But learning to use FAI is not so easy.
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Of course the Linux world does not stand still. The shiny new Debian Sarge installer introduced a new feature called pre-seeding. Pre-seeding means creating an answer file that answers all questions asked by the installer. Pre-seeding supports both local installations from bootable media, and network installations.
There are a number of different ways to do this:
Local installation with the standard installation CD/DVDs, plus the preseed file on removable media.
Local installation with the standard installation CD/DVDs, plus the preseed file fetched from a network drive.
Network installation from either a Debian mirror or a local mirror.
Using a remastered CD or DVD containing the preseed file.
This two-part series covers network installation of Etch, the Testing release of Debian. (There are a lot of changes from Sarge, the Stable Debian release. Each one has its own excellent official Debian installation manual, so make sure you have the right one.) Part 1 shows you a couple of simple ways to generate and use a preseed configuration file. Part 2 will cover in detail configuring your preseed configuration file, and setting up a local mirror for fast automatic installations. Full Story |
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