Installing Ubuntu remotely

[Mandery, Christian]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for a way to install Ubuntu remotely on headless machines
via SSH (+ alternative ncurses installer) or VNC (+ "normal" installer).

At the moment I'm trying to modify the initrd of the Alternate Install
CD to add support for SSH and write some scripts to bring the network up
with DHCP automatically and other stuff. The machines are booted with
PXE, the kernel on the CD and my modified initrd.

If possible, I'd like to read the CD data from an NFS-mounted ISO within
the initrd instead of letting the installer download everything from
the internet.

I understand that this could be difficult because it would need portmap,
losetup and other utilities in the initrd but the SLES and RHEL
installation
have similar features.

Has anyone done anything like this before or is there an "official"
solution or howto for network installations?

Greetings,
Christian