Preseed/Kickstart Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
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I'm curious if anyone has a relatively clear-cut and dry resource for the process of creating a preseed and kickstart configuration file for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
I am trying to put together an unattended installer for a USB thumb drive that will allow me to do a base install of Ubuntu Server. I don't really do these builds with great enough frequency to justify spending the time on putting together a Cobbler server, but I do stand to save a significant chunk of time by automating the installation. I've already got the build out process setup in Ansible, but this will allow me to RONCO the whole thing from start to finish.
I've tried following a couple of tutorials I found via google, but things just aren't working as expected. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!
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Have not done this with Ubuntu. Used to do Kickstart with RHEL all the time (RHEL 3, 4 and 5.) It works okay but the time savings did not offset the effort very well.
These days I would look to use Chef, Puppet or Ansible instead, perhaps. Or just an image.
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Out of curiosity.... why are you installing a two version old Ubuntu (unless you are running something like MongoDB that has trailing support issues.) And why are you doing traditional installs rather than just doing a one time install and replicating the VM image?
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I apologize, I didn't make it clear that this is for installing to desktop systems. I'm trying to take a lightweight base server install and do post installation customization via Ansible. As far as deploying all the necessary packages after installation goes, I've got the Ansible part of the equation working fine. After I've got the server version installed I use Ansible to install the ubuntu-desktop package, libre-office, and everything else that will be needed.
I have read that baremetal deployment is possible using Ansible, but I haven't really explored it much. What I did see involved pairing it with Cobbler. I don't feel my needs necessitate a deployment of Cobbler. We're a relatively small organization (just under 50 employees) and I would rather have something I could install via usb and customize the build using Ansible. This has led me to pursue the option of using preseed and kickstart configuration files.
I'm not necessarily opposed to using 15.04, I've just always stuck with the LTS releases for deployment.
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@RamblingBiped said:
I'm not necessarily opposed to using 15.04, I've just always stuck with the LTS releases for deployment.
I'm the opposite. Due to stability and patch issues, I would never use LTS for production (only in a lab) except for the time when the LTS release is also the current release. Remember LTS is only a name and does not imply any additional support. Staying on old, out of date, unsupported OS versions is especially bad in production.
