enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

[Bolesław Tokarski <boleslaw.tokarski@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, Philipp,

> Till now we've been using Fedora and automated installation over PXE
> with Cobbler and Kickstart.

I haven't seen it in action but there is some 'kickseed' that can use 
similar kickstart files as those coming from RedHat. That might be 
interesting for you if you want to have the same setup for both.

> We want encryption for /home /tmp /swap. We used full disk encryption
> with LVM an luks/cryptsetup.

Yup, we have the same. As of Ubuntu 12.10 it is possible to achieve it 
with the graphical installer. Up to 12.04 you needed to use the 
alternative image and preseeding.

> Fedora uses Anaconda and Kickstart files that make it easy to automate
> the full installation process, including disk encryption, package
> installation and post-scripts.
> We're using a custom firstboot script to set up the user and add his
> password to cryptsetup.
You can do all of that with preseeding. See:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed
> I was looking for ways to integrate Ubuntu Desktop Staging into our
> existing Cobbler PXE Setup (on CentOS) but I could only find fragments
> and not much on 12.04. A lot of the information is incomplete or
> outdated (11.10 or earlier)
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/Netboot
> http://michaeldehaan.net/post/39496835943/experiences-with-cobbler-deploying-ubuntu-precise
I don't think there is a lot (if any) changes to automated installation 
between those releases, though it always comes down to details, so it 
depends.

How do you use Cobbler? What does it actually do in your environment? I 
have not used it but its web page says it does everything :p

> Does Ubuntu save the answers / preseed file when installing manually?

Yes and no. The install-time settings are saved in the debconf database 
that you can read with debconf-get-selections. However, these are all 
the settings, and most of them are defaults that you do not need to set 
anyways. There are also settings that a package sets based on one of the 
other settings. You actually need to start with the example config and 
add the answers that pop-up with it.

> Couldn't find the information on the installed system or during
> installation. Fedora generates a kickstart file you can then reuse to
> set up other systems.
True, but it's not the case in the Debian-based world.
> What do you use/recommend for desktop installation?
We are using the CD or USB drive mini-iso (~150MB) with preseeding and 
download all up-to-date packages from the repository server. We use 
LVM+encryption for partitioning, leaving 25% unallocated so the user can 
decide if his work conditions require more on / or on /home. We also 
install our CFEngine agent and provide the rest of the system policies 
through it upon reboot.

I would be eager to hear what did other people use for their deployments.
> It would be great if some more detailed information could be found on
> the Enterprise Ubuntu Wiki.
I think it's a good idea. With a certain dose of hammering (or if there 
is more interest in it) I might actually put something sensible in 
there. Though, I am just one and I believe this should be more general 
than just my environment.

I hope this helps. At least a little bit.

Best regards,
Ballock