1

Is there a way to save my setup selections from a regular CDROM install for use as a preseed or kickstart file? I'm experimenting with booting hosts from PXE to standardize Ubuntu installations and wondering if there's an easier way to get the config the way I want. Particularly the Partman config is a royal pain.

update: This seems to dig the setup configuration out of somewhere, but the result doesn't pass it's own checks cleanly:

apt-get -y install debconf-utils
debconf-get-selections --installer > /tmp/setup.cfg

# debconf-set-selections -v -c /tmp/setup.cfg 
warning: Unknown type error, skipping line 2
info: Trying to set 'netcfg/wireless_security_type' [select] to 'wpa'
info: Loading answer for 'netcfg/wireless_security_type'
warning: Unknown type error, skipping line 7
warning: Unknown type error, skipping line 9
info: Trying to set 'mirror/http/proxy' [string] to ''
...

Tried booting the PXE client with setup.cfg and it does seem to work (mostly) despite all the warnings during the check. It does finally fail with the error below: enter image description here

Server Fault
  • 3,714
  • 12
  • 54
  • 89

2 Answers2

2

The simplest solution would be to use one of the following tool: https://fai-project.org/ - Project was aimed to automate debian installation process, can be used with many other images.

The other one would be to use MAAS. Basically you will have a staging server that is configured with DHCP, DNS and PXE services. You supply the image to the MAAS and then you will even be able to deploy machines that are shutdown using the LOM interface. https://maas.io/

Dmitriy Kupch
  • 471
  • 2
  • 6
  • Thanks for the info. Those look like great projects. I've already got PXE and TFTP setup however so just looking for a way to save all configs I've set in a regular CDROM install. – Server Fault Dec 21 '18 at 15:49
1

Preseed can only configure some basic things. Often you need a config management after the preseed installation to get the whole system configured to your local needs. That's why you should look at other solutions like FAI. FAI also has a much simpler config format for the disk partitioning. It''s similar to an fstab, but can also configure softraid and LVM.

MrFAI
  • 36
  • 1