New, easy, way to create preseeded install image

[Paul Telford <pxt@debian.org>]

One of the greatest things about the Debian Installer is the power of
preseeding -- allowing you to create a boot disk which can install a
machine hands-free one or one hundred times.  One part of preseeding
that can be a bit of a pain is getting the file created, in the proper
syntax, inserted into an image, etc.  (especially disk partitioning
which can be rather cryptic!)  With that, I would like to announce a
potential solution:

  http://instalinux.com

This is the first (publicly-accessible) practical implementation of a
project started by Hewlett Packard which wraps a web front-end around
the various distributions' installation routines.  In short, with a
few simple steps on the website you can build a network-install ISO
image that you then boot on any machine to get Linux installed
according to your preferences -- all completely hands free after you
hit the power button.  HP has already used this technology to deploy
thousands of systems worldwide.

This message is an invitation to try it out and send some feedback. 
Please do not send technical problems directly to me, but rather use
the message board on the site; you are welcome to send any other types
of feedback to me or to this list and I'll pass them along to the site
owner.

Feel free to forward the link to anyone who might be interested, the
system currently has the capability to create install images for
Debian, Fedora, SuSE & Ubuntu.  Please also forward to any other
Debian list that might be interested/appropriate -- I wasn't sure
which was the best fit as I only subscribe to d-announce &
d-d-announce.


Thanks,


 Paul.