Documentation for netboot [was Re: Proposal to drop Ubuntu alternate CDs for 12.10]

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Serge Hallyn
<serge.hallyn at canonical.com> wrote:
> Cool - what I use right now is pretty much
>
> https://s3hh.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/simple-netboot-setup/
>
> It's not as short and sweet as what I hope you'll end up with :)  but once
> it's setup (as it is for me on 2 or 3 laptops) I just get a new mini iso
>
> (
> ################################
> serge at amd1:~$ cat bin/getminiiso
> #!/bin/sh
>
> release=$1
> f=${release}-mini.iso
> if [ -f $f ]; then
>         echo "$f exists"
> fi
>
> wget -O $f http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/${release}/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso
> ################################
> )
>
> mount that to /mnt, rsync it to /var/lib/tftpboot/$release, copy the preseed
> file back into there, and now the other laptop can just boot+install from it.

As a small simplification:

wget -O - $url/mini.iso  | bsdtar xvf -

that is, bsdtar can extract iso images just like regular tar archives
without the need of root priviledges for loopback mounting. That might
be easier to document.

-- 
regards,
    Reinhard