What is best approach for a hands-free install?

PeterSteele · 07-03-2012, 01:03 PM

I'm developing a system that will need to create VMs on the fly programmatically. The create process has to be completely hands-free, so the typical step-by-step wizard isn't an option. What's the best approach to creating a hands-free Linux install? We haven't decided on a specific distro to use but it will likely be CentOS. I read about Kickstart and that might suit our needs, but I was wondering if there are other options?

Didier Spaier · 07-03-2012, 01:18 PM

If Slackware is an option for you, read this from AlienBOB aka Eric Hameleers. If it's not exactly what you want, you could adapt according to your needs.

EDIT Oh, and I almost forgot: welcome to LQ.

PeterSteele · 07-03-2012, 02:01 PM

Thanks Didier. I think I'm going to like LQ a lot. It's breadth is amazing and the forums appear to be very active.

We hadn't considered Slackware up until now. Not sure if this ssh install feature would do what we need; I'll have to experiment. We'll likely end up building our own .img or .iso file and pass that to virt-install. The trick is to have the subsequent install of the OS to as fast as possible and completely hands-free.

lithos · 07-03-2012, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterSteele

...
The trick is to have the subsequent install of the OS to as fast as possible and completely hands-free.

That's why CentOS (RHEL based, like Scientific Linux, Fedora..) has kickstart, example ks.

TobiSGD · 07-03-2012, 02:51 PM

I would go for Kickstart (Red Hat based), Preseed (Debian based) or, if all the VMs are the same, just cloning a harddisk-image that has the OS on it.

PeterSteele · 07-03-2012, 03:30 PM

The VMs will in fact be largely identical. The only thing that will vary is the amount of swap space allocated to the VM, and for that reason I was thinking a pre-installed .img file might be the best option. I've done this exact sort of thing with FreeBSD. I'll have to investigate the same idea for CentOS.