In yesterday's post I described how to install Linux over the network. Now I'm going to polish that off with a bit of post-install scriptery that does a bit more customization.

This part of the tutorial makes use of several different concepts to provide a customized install experience. First is the use of LDAP authentication on the domain. Your network may or may not use this. If you aren't already authenticating with LDAP you'll want to adapt this tutorial to your needs. Next is the use of the new user "Skeleton" configuration where you can place items that are automatically copied into a user's home directory the first time they log in. Last is using the rc.local file to run a script in such a way that it only runs the first time the computer is booted. This could be adapted to ask for the name of the computer during that step or other things to allow even more customization during install. A common practice instead of using a bash script like I did is to use a Python script at this point to allow for a more pleasing and customizable setup.

If you are trying to run an enterprise in Linux, one of the key components needed is a way to automatically deploy and configure Linux on the desktop. With this you can also make a memory test utility available over the network.

Enter LinuxPXE.

With LinuxPXE and Ubuntu you can easily push desktop installs out over the network to computers without CD drives, and have it preconfigure most of your common settings.

You'll need the following components on a server:

tftpd-hpa  (TFTP Server)
A DHCP Server
An Ubuntu Jaunty Alternate CD ISO Image file

Notice I said "tftpd-hpa" - the openbsd-tftpd server will not work for this.

You'll also need an Ubuntu Jaunty desktop with:

system-config-kickstart

I'm going to assume a rather high level of network design knowledge in this and not tell you silly things like "you can only have one DHCP server on the network at a time" - wait, I just told you that. Anyway, if you aren't already familiar with configuring an Enterprise grade network then this may go a bit fast for you.

TFTP

First, configure your TFTP server. You must edit /etc/default/tftpd-hpa to enable it:

#Defaults for tftpd-hpa
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
OPTIONS="-l -s /var/lib/tftpboot"

Now start it with: