View Source: AutoInstall - Waikato Linux Users Group

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!!This method is outdated; read about

* UbuntuRemastering (applies to Debian Sarge and up also)
* [Debian preseed installation|http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/394]

!!AutoInstall by Progeny

An AutomatedInstallation tool for [Debian].

Bought to you by CraigBox and NeilFenemor with help from JohnMcPherson and DanielLawson

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autoinstall depends __far__ too much on having a 1720Kb floppy disc around - so lets blow that away and use a CDRW.

Run make-autoinst-initrd(1) to get your linux and initrd.gz file.  This is the end of the involvement with the tools that are provided for autoinstall.

Make a conf dir, copy the examples from /usr/share/doc/autoinstall/ into it.  Run autoinst-read-debconf debconf.cfg in this directory to backup your debconf database.

 (cd conf && tar cf - . | gzip -9) > conf.tgz

Go get isolinux - part of the syslinux(1) suits - and get it to boot your kernel and initrd file.

I recommend using isolinux-debug.bin until you get things working right - apt-get(8) source syslinux, and then make isolinux-debug.

Create a cdrom/ directory somewhere.  Create a cdrom/isolinux/, put isolinux{-debug}.bin in there.  Create an cdrom/isolinux/isolinux.cfg file with your lilo(8)-like boot options - you can just use

 timeout 100
 default linux initrd=initrd.gz
 prompt 1

Copy your kernel (''linux'') and initrd (''initrd.gz'') into the cdrom/isolinux/ directory.

Copy conf.tgz into the cdrom/ directory; it will be mounted off the CD when the system boots off it.

In the cdrom/ directory, issue

 mkisofs -o ../bootcd.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
 -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table .

Now cdrecord that baby and watch things fly.

(Note: You'll need to change linuxrc inside your initrd, to get to mount your data off /cdrom instead of /dev/fd0u1720, unless you want to use a disk as well (whats the point, really?)  It's in /usr/lib/autoinstall.)

Search for autoinst_config_drive = "/dev/fd0u1720" and replace with

        autoinst_config_drive = "/dev/hdc"
        autoinst_config_fstype = "iso9660"

-----

Kernel 2.4 keeps its modules somewhere else: a patch for /usr/lib/autoinstall/mkmodules:

 --- mkmodules.old       Thu Feb 28 14:16:36 2002
 +++ mkmodules   Thu Aug 22 10:46:32 2002
 @@ -133,7 +133,7 @@
      if not os.path.exists(depmodrealpath):
          continue

 -    moddir = "%s/%s" % (modroot, os.path.basename(os.path.dirname(depmodpath)))
 +    moddir = "%s" % (os.path.dirname(depmodpath)[[5:])
      if not os.path.isdir(moddir):
 -        os.mkdir(moddir)
 +        os.makedirs(moddir)
      os.system("cp %s %s" % (depmodrealpath, moddir))
-----

A better idea when using a CD is to replace the mkmodules script (or at least the bit at the end) with a nice simple one:

 # Copy the modules in.
 os.mkdir("modules")
 modroot = "modules/%s" % kernelversion
 os.mkdir(modroot)
 os.system("cp -r %s/%s/* %s" % (modpath, kernelversion, modroot))

Then it copies the entire modules tree.

To do this you will need to make a bigger initrd: in /usr/bin/make-autoinst-initrd, replace the lines

 dd if=/dev/zero of=$TMPPATH/initrd bs=1024 count=4096
 /sbin/mke2fs -Fq -N 2048 $TMPPATH/initrd

with

 dd if=/dev/zero of=$TMPPATH/initrd bs=1024 count=8192
 /sbin/mke2fs -Fq -N 4096 $TMPPATH/initrd

to make an 8mb ramdisk instead.  Then, edit conf/isolinux/isolinux.cfg to append "ramdisk_size=8192" to your kernel parameters.  Thanks to DanielLawson for the heads up on this one.

Part of LinuxInstallationNotes
3 pages link to AutoInstall:
Last edited on Monday, May 15, 2006 11:48:59 am by CraigBox
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