[cobbler] Can deploy Ubuntu using a kickstart file rather than a preseed?

Will Dennis wdennis at nec-labs.com
Thu Sep 25 21:11:49 UTC 2014


Hi Nish,

No, specifying a KS file instead of a preseed file in the "Kickstart" drop (using cobbler-web here...) makes the install blow up as I described in my earlier post. I suspect that a distribution of breed "ubuntu" makes Cobbler want to use a preseed ("d-i") format file instead of a kickstart, since that is the "native" answer file format for that distro type...


-----Original Message-----
From: Nishanth Aravamudan [mailto:nacc at linux.vnet.ibm.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 3:53 PM
To: Will Dennis
Cc: cobbler mailing list
Subject: Re: [cobbler] Can deploy Ubuntu using a kickstart file rather than a preseed?

On 25.09.2014 [19:40:12 +0000], Will Dennis wrote:
> Thanks, Alastair. Guess I'll be learning Debian Installer syntax then
> ;)

Yeah, I'd recommend d-i as the default, but it's painful and preseed is not well-documented (especially the hidden options/values to make for a NQA (no questions asked) install).
> 
> Would be cool in the future if Cobbler could support either d-i or 
> kickstart for breed "ubuntu", since there is support now, and I'd 
> wager most Cobbler users are more familiar with kickstart...

I don't think it's worth doing until it's fully supported by Ubuntu.

But, I don't see why you can't just have your profile use a kickstart and it wouldn't just work? I don't believe that Cobbler really knows about the syntax of the file used to netboot, it just treats it as a template, etc. I might be wrong, though.

That is, for your system, just point it's kickstart entry to a kickstart file instead of a preseed. Does that work?

-Nish



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