Kickstart support info

[Henning Sprang]

Hy Marc,

On Apr 11, 2005 7:28 PM, Marc MERLIN <marc at merlins.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking at Ubuntu to replace a bunch of RH machines, and well, from
> the little I looked at it, installing ubuntu or debian with d-i is very
> tedious.
> [...]

I use FAI - http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ for this, which is
a tool made for fully automatic installation of Debian based distros
(others should also be possible, but not yet realized), which can make
use of d-i's preseeding and is able to do network as well as cd
installations ( in the newest versions) without touching the machine.
There are FAI packages in hoary universe, but AFAIK they are not able
to install Ubuntu out of the box, because they are simply "copied"
from Debian and just will install sarge. But this shouldn't be a big
problem, see below.

> 
> So, I became very interested in your kickstart work, since, well, it is
> really all I need and I already have kickstart files.
> 
> My requirements are:
> - I need a fully automated install: the installer cannot stop to ask
>   questions, it has to do a full unattended install
> - I absolutely need %pre and %post support
> - md and lvm would be nice, but they don't seem supported yet, and I can
>   probably kludge in %pre as long as the installer then knows who to use
>   the partitions I created and mounted

I am not sure if FAI supports md/lvm because I never tested that, but
I wrote an howto that enables you to install ubuntu from a Debian
sarge or Ubuntu Hoary machine  to be found at
http://www.sprang.de/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_install_with_FAI
There you'll find a pointer to my Ubuntu FAI packages with integrated
support for Ubuntu instead of sarge installation, too (they not
already include th cd feature mentioned above, which is in the newest
FAI version not already ported to Ubuntu, but upcoming :) ).

And provide hoary packages, that are patched to do most of these
things written there, in case you are running an ubuntu machine, that
can act as install server.

In case there are any troubles, there's a small but responsive
community around FAI with experiences in using FAI in environments
from home use over medium to large corporate and scientific networks
to installation of clusters with hundreds of machines which can help
in a lot of cases.

cheers, 
Henning


-- 
Henning Sprang
http://www.sprang.de
jabber: henning at jabber.ccc.de