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I am trying to set up an automated process for installing/re-imaging some Ubuntu boxes (16.04). I am working from Automating the installation using preseeding which has a good description of how to construct the preseed file but is a bit terse when it comes to how to deploy it and I am the first to admit that my primary role is not sysadmin :)

I am doing the install over idrac from an ISO on a virtual drive. I want to preseed as much as possible which seems to imply that I should use initrd. The install instructions says

If you are using initrd preseeding, you only have to make sure a file named preseed.cfg is included in the root directory of the initrd

but I have no idea how I would do this -- do I need to alter the ISO?

Russell Fulton
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  • Typically for automated install on bare metal installation you would use PXE + tftp, not an ISO. – jordanm Dec 18 '17 at 06:25

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Russel, the process for installing your preseed.cfg into an iso is outlined here for Debian-Installer (which is used by SOME Ubuntu installers (I believe at least the server releases do, but this is not entirely clear/publicized)).

I've been doing this successfully with Debian isos for a while, and recently tried to do same with Ubuntu isos and, like you, hit a wall.

As you wrote, the ubuntu documentation says explicitly you just have to put a preseed.cfg in the initrd root (which for ubuntu server 17.10 amd64 iso, is the root of the gz archive at install/initrd.gz). Preseeding an Ubuntu iso in this way simply doesn't work as advertised by Ubuntu. So far, I have tried this with server and desktop, 17.04 and 17.10 releases. (See here for some very relevant details.)

Please advise if you have made any progress on this since December. Thanks!

timblaktu
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