I decided it was time to place a PXE boot install image on my network for installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid desktops. For the most part everything went as expected (see this post) but during the install I got an error that "restricted/binary-amd64/Packages was corrupt".

It turns out there are no restricted packages on the alternate installer image, and the lack of an empty "Packages" file at "/dists/lucid/restricted/binary-amd64" where the networked install image is located was causing it to bomb.

Simply doing

touch Packages

in that shared directory within the install image seems to have fixed the issue. For some reason the fact that the Packages.gz ungzips into a zero byte file was throwing it, but having an already existing zero byte file seemed to fix it.

Today we are continuing to polish off how to do unattended installs of Linux.

Yesterday I covered how to run a bash script after a kickstarted installation to do any additional setup that isn't handled by the Kickstart file.

Installation of some packages require user input, which breaks the entire concept of "unattended" installs. Here's a quick fix to get around that.

First, on a setup computer, install the following:

sudo apt-get install debconf-utils

Now, install whatever packages you wish to later install in an unattended mode. Answer the questions for installation appropriately when prompted. Next we will export those answers into a "seed" file that we can use when installing the package on a new machine. For instance, I've installed several ldap authentication packages, so I might want to grab all of the settings those packages ask for.

sudo debconf-get-selections | grep ldap > ldap.seed

If you remember from yesterday, we created an archive that included a setup script and several config files. Place the ldap.seed file inside that archive along with the other scripts, and just before doing the apt-get install add the following line to the add2network.sh file:

debconf-set-selections ./ldap.seed

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.

I'm still not sure what the problem is. I'm attempting to install Ubuntu 8.04 on a new machine and it keeps freezing up during the install. So far I've tried disabling virtualization in the BIOS, a different hard drive and now I'm trying the built-in video instead of the GeForce card I'm going to use.

Update:
Things I've tried:

boot params: noapic, nolapic acpi=off
Multiple hard drives
Removed PCIx video card and used onboard video
Setting BIOS SATA controller to "Legacy IDE"
Native SATA Mode
Standard IDE hard drive
Another DVD reader in case it was a bad source drive
Memtest, just to make sure it wasn't bad memory
Booted into 8.04 live CD and tried to partition the drive - still froze
Tried different SATA cable and port (even though the IDE drive failed too)
I finally booted a 7.10 32 bit Live CD and was able to partition and format the drive
Still no luck installing 8.04 on top of that formatted drive, however...
Tried setting SATA mode to RAID