Re: Ideas thrown around for Fully Automated Installations

[Thiemo Seufer <ica2_ts@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de>]

Christian Perrier wrote:
[snip]
> I started thinking about a very simple package (let's name it
> "automate") which just:
> 
> -runs very early
> -loads the floppy module
> -read a file from the floppy (FAT16 formatted) with simple debconf
> variables settings (and comments):
[snip]
> -feed debconf with these values (small script to be written)
> -run the installer
> 
> I have chosen floppy as support because we can guess (maybe wrongly)
> that this is the most common thing we have on machines and because
> it's probably not too much costly having the module on the initrd....

Automated installs tend to be networked, and with DHCP, AFAICS. So it's
probably better to include a file in the initrd which is enough to get
the network running, and then fetch a second one via network (via e.g.
http).

We probably don't even need to include a hardcoded file in the initrd
if we can start the installer with a boot parameter

	automate="http://server/path/to/config";

(For PXE, this boot parameter can be defined in the PXE config on the
server side, in dependance of the client IP address. That's much simpler
than config floppies for a few hundred machines. :-)


Thiemo