deploying unattended ubuntu installation...
 

guys I need some help doing an unattended network installation of 10 machine running ubuntu, for this I've been trying to follow this article here and istead of pulling the installation of a mirror in the internet I've been trying to setup a local repository with apt-cacher, all goes well, except I'm getting an error when the clients try to download the preseed.cfg file from server, I ignore that and keep going and then get another error telling me that it can't find the debconf file... could anyone help me with this unattended install of ubuntu

What's the exact errors?

well, I got passed the error, and it was b/c the preseed.cfg file wasn't properly formatted, but now I got problem accessing a local mirror... so I was forced to set it to get it from the us.archive.ubuntu.com mirror, but what I wanted to do is pull the install from a local server, what I did I extracted the content of the alternate cd to my server a 2003 server and when I configure the preseed.cfg file to get it from that server I got an error "can't download a valid release file from mirror"

Is there any chance that since you put the file on a Server 2003 machine it changed the file format to ntfs?

The file contents shouldn't change, regardless of the file system you use. If that happens, then we say that there's been file corruption. The fs driver can store the info in whatever form, but applications should always see exactly the same regardless of the fs you use. Another thing is if he actually opened the file using a windows program (or a window program decided to tinker with that file for dog-knows-what-reason).

In that case, text files can be messed because windows and linux handle line endings differently.

That makes sense. I learn something new everyday. My next suggestion would be to run wireshark on the image server and see if the request is actually getting across or if for some reason it's being rejected.

Quick story on this: One time I had a problem with DNS not resolving anything outside the localhost. I ran a sniff and I saw queries hitting the DNS machine but the reply packets would say something about denial. I then learned there was a configuration that specified who could be given name resolution and who wasn't allowed. Of course I probably would have known this if I had just read the documentation before I messed with it but oh well.

well, the installation finally worked, but I had to move the distribution to an ubuntu server instead, for some reason the client machine could access the preseed file off the windows 2003 web server, probably misconfiguration, the preseed file is a config file that basically allows you to do an unattended install

thanks