Posts made by RobPomeroy

RobPomeroy

@george1421 - I took a lot of inspiration from that whole post of yours; you’ve clearly done a lot of work in this area, so thank you for that. In my approach, I wanted to achieve this using the lightweight network installer for Debian, rather than a Live CD/filesystem.squashfs approach.

So this:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/os/debian/Server10.7/linux
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/os/debian/Server10.7/initrd.gz
imgargs linux auto=true url=http://${fog-ip}/os/autoinstall/debian-10/preseed.cfg hostname=debian-10 domain=local interface=auto vga=788 noprompt --- quiet
boot || goto MENU

…is closer to what I’d hope to achieve. I did try an approach along these lines, but without any success, hence resorting to the grub method. I’ll give it another try - thanks!

RobPomeroy

PS This is obviously a network install, depending on some files being placed on the FOG server. The installer downloads packages from the internet, so this is no use for air-gapped machines.

RobPomeroy

Hi all,

First newbie post.

I’ve managed to automate the installation of Debian 10 using FOG and the netboot installer on a UEFI system. I haven’t found complete documentation on this, so here are some notes on how I achieved this. I would love it if this process could be improved on. Is there a “FOGgier” way to do some of the hackier things?

Disclaimer: I have only been using FOG for a few days!

Unpack netboot.tar.gz into the TFTP server root (/tftpboot).
Create a symbolic (must be relative, not absolute) to the UEFI kernel:

cd /tftpboot
ln -s debian-installer/amd64/grubx64.efi .

Edit /tftpboot/debian-installer/amd64/grub/grub.cfg, adding the following before the first menuentry block:

set default="autoinstall"
set timeout=5
menuentry "Fully automated installation" --id autoinstall {
     set background_color=black
     linux    /debian-installer/amd64/linux auto=true url=http://${pxe_default_server}/os/autoinstall/debian-10/preseed.cfg hostname=debian-10 domain=local interface=auto vga=788 noprompt --- quiet
     initrd   /debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz
}

Create a preseed file and place it on the FOG webserver at /var/www/html/os/autoinstall/debian-10/preseed.cfg. (Double-check that path - I relocated my os/ directory and forget where it was originally! Think that’s right though.)
Create a new iPXE Menu Entry:

Menu item: os.Debian.10.7.UEFI
Description: Install Debian 10.7 (UEFI)
Parameters:
kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/grubx64.efi
boot || goto MENU
Menu Show with: All hosts

That’s all, I think. This is PXE booting for me perfectly. When I choose the FOG menu entry “Install Debian 10.7 (UEFI)” it loads the kernel/grub menu, waits 5 seconds and then performs a completely unattended installation (and finally reboots).

What could be improved
I’d rather not place the files exactly where there are in the /tftpboot folder. That approach is asking for trouble - one day I overwrite them with some other distro’s files… But grubx64.efi seems to have some hard-coded files it looks for, so I’m not sure where else to place them. Possibly there are some parameters i can use on the kernel line? Not sure.

Also, how might this approach be generalised for other operating systems?

Suggestions welcome!