search

elementary / installer

Installer front-end for Linux-based OSes
https://elementary.io
GNU General Public License v3.0
173 stars 48 forks source link

Make preseed/kickstart/unattended install possible #503

Open swirly opened 3 years ago

swirly commented 3 years ago

I'm in a team that deploy linux in large academic environnement. As of today, we're using essentially Debian because of the real ease of automated install : you can preseed the installer with even an http remote file ! There are others types of methods to do this, named kickstart or unattended. Even Microsoft Windows installer can be fully automated !

We'd like to deploy elementary OS, but we need that the installation can be fully automated. When you have just one person and one day to deploy 100 to 250 desktop computers for pupils, you can't seat in front of each computer : pxe boot, preseeded installation and voila !

The addition of this use case would be a real killer feature. Indeed for us it would be necessary :)

TIA for your consideration

swirly commented 3 years ago

Thank you. If I can be of any help in the design process, I will gladly participate

meisenzahl commented 3 years ago

I have implemented a minimal prototype ^

It works based on a JSON configuration file.

@swirly Could you please explain a bit more how your current setup works with Debian. Do you have to modify the ISO file or how does it work?

swirly commented 3 years ago

In debian, there is a pressed file that can be combined with the iso without modifying the iso. If you use a USB key, the preseed file can be on the usb key But, far more interessant, the preseed file can be accessed through http with a kernel parameter at startup. For pxe installation, you just have to :

It can even be created server side on the fly, so you can have different setup for different machines.

The complete description of this brilliant mechanism is here : Debian preseed

possible preseed source are file, floppy, http, https and tftp

The preseed format is really a flat file, simple to understand and write example preseed file

Note that the preseed file allow to automate installation not only of the installer but also give pre-recorded answer for all debian packages.

Hope this helps

Conan-Kudo commented 3 years ago

This is also true with kickstart (which can be used with Debian systems with kickseed). The inst.ks kernel parameter can be read by the installer to load the kickstart from anywhere.

Kickstart support also means that most provisioning systems can deploy elementary OS with existing code (cobbler, spacewalk/uyuni, foreman, etc.).

swirly commented 1 year ago

Almost two years since report. Any news on this ?

swirly commented 1 month ago

Three year and a half since opening.

Should the issue be marked as won't-fix or is there any roadmap on this ?

Actually, installing elementary OS on an academic part is the best way to promote the OS. What you use in school is a reference for future. But for now, this installation is not possible without automatic deployement.

Again, systems in open source like deb preseed or kickstart exist for this. They shall be a good base.