It's a common scenario: you've been given the task of rolling out dozens of Linux boxes, but you'd rather not have to go through the pain of installing every one them manually. Automated installations with Redhat are well documented, but what about Ubuntu?
Ubuntu inherits Debian's ability to preseed the answers to its installation questions, but the instructions for this are rather haphazard and seems to quickly become out of date as newer versions are released.
In this article, we'll look at setting up automated installations for Ubuntu Jaunty, entirely from the network. We'll start out with one assumption however - that the workstation being used has the ability to perform network boots using PXE. Most modern workstations and servers have this feature, which is usually enabled via the BIOS. If your computer doesn't have this, then you will most likely need to initial your boots from a CDROM, floppy disk drive or USB key.
Continue reading "Automatic installations of Ubuntu with preseeding"