[Tech] Partimus (PXE?) (nearly?) unattended install solution(s?)

[Tai Kedzierski]

Hi all,

*PXE Server*

I've been making a little progress here and there with PXE booting. I can
now successfully setup a CentOS PXE server, boot from it, and serve a
CentOS image, which installs unattended to completion. Wehey!

Serving a plain Ubuntu Server image however still remains elusive (need to
crack that before trying to serve the customized Partimus image)

Notes in the *https://github.com/taikedz/our-pxe
<https://github.com/taikedz/our-pxe>* repository under the */pxe*
directory. If you follow the steps for CentOS, you should be able to
replicate my success. Could anyone please give this a go, and then have a
look and see where I've gone wrong with the Ubuntu variation?

*@Michael Paoli* - I got to the same error "could not read from boot
medium" as you did in your notes; and am finding it likely to be the
initramfs image in use - the DVD-shipped one clearly expects to find its
contents on a CD, not online. Ubuntu ships special "netboot" ISOs with
network-enabled initramfs images, but I still hit a wall. No idea for
Debian.


*Custom ISO*

I should also note that in my first implementation of the customized
Partimus image (the one downloadable currently), *the root password is
hard-coded in the script - very not-optimal*. I'll produce a less stupidly
insecure image eventually, and replace the download image.

On live machines that have already been installed with this base image,
removing the init script */etc/init.d/respin-firstboot* should suffice...
change the root password afterwards of course, or disable root login once
you are satisfied there is an admin user with sudo access.

In the script the offending lines start at line 88
*https://github.com/taikedz/our-pxe/blob/master/bin/respin.sh
<https://github.com/taikedz/our-pxe/blob/master/bin/respin.sh>* when I
create the init script. I coded these this way to work around the root
account locking I couldn't otherwise figure out.




Turrah,

Tai



===
Tai Kedzierski

Office Computing Consultant
http://helpuse.com
+44 (0) 7526 963 612 (portable GB)

  I use www.libreoffice.org

*"Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price."*
https://bitly.com/1gXkUcc


On 3 April 2015 at 02:24, Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt at gmail.com> wrote:

> The results of our doodle.com poll is in, and it appears that we are not
> going to be able to meet on April 4 or April 11, and so those dates are
> out.  Would you please renew your votes on the doodle poll to indicate if
> you might be available on April 18 or April 25?  thanks.
>
> Thanks very much for all of your great help to each of you!
>
> --
> Christian Einfeldt
>
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