UPDATE: In response to a comment below, I have added this warning to the top. Please do not use any of these files unmodified. They have been created/tested for my purposes and are meant to be guides which will help you understand how the Debian preseed process works.
In this post, I will walk through a simple preseed file that can be used to install a very minimal Debian (wheezy) machine in ~10 minutes (depending on the mirror used). The installer will only ask for the hostname. Everything else will be automated.
To get started, you will want to download the netboot ISO. You can get this from http://tinyurl.com/67nlk8q or any other Debian mirror. If all your machines are on the same network, it may make sense to setup gPXE. Details on that will be covered in a later post.
In order to use the preseed file outlined below, you will need to boot with the following appended options (press TAB at the installer screen). Note that the debugging variables are only necessary if you are having trouble.
DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 locale=en_US.UTF-8 console-keymaps-at/keymap=us domain=unassigned-domain url=http://www.siriad.com/preseed/wheezy.cfg
The first thing we will do is configure the networking settings necessary to automate the install.
##############
# Networking
##############
# Uncomment and fill in these in order to preseed the hostname question
#d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unassigned-hostname
#d-i netcfg/get_domain string unassigned-domain
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth0
d-i mirror/http/proxy string
I am pointing to the default US Debian archive. You should change this to suit your setup. Also note that here is where we tell the installer to use the “wheezy” installation sources.
########################
# Installation Sources
########################
d-i mirror/country string US
d-i mirror/http/mirror string ftp.us.debian.org
d-i mirror/http/directory string /debian/
d-i mirror/suite string wheezy
Here, I am using the default partitioning scheme and wiping any existing partitions. You may need to change this if you want custom partitions.
#################################
# Disk Partitioning/Boot loader
#################################
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
#d-i partman-auto/method string lvm
d-i partman-auto/method string regular
d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true
# And the same goes for the confirmation to write the lvm partitions.
#d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
# You can choose from any of the predefined partitioning recipes.
# Note: this must be preseeded with a localized (translated) value.
#d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe \
# select All files in one partition (recommended for new users)
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select /lib/partman/recipes/30atomic
#d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe \
# select Separate /home partition
#d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe \
# select Separate /home, /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions
# This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation.
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true
d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true
d-i grub-pc/install_devices multiselect /dev/sda
Once again, your localization settings will likely differ from these, so modify as needed.
#################
# Localizations
#################
# Keyboard localization
d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select us
#d-i console-setup/variantcode string dvorak
# Timezone
d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true
d-i time/zone string America/Chicago
d-i apt-setup/wheezy-updates boolean true
d-i apt-setup/non-free boolean true
d-i apt-setup/security-updates boolean true
d-i apt-setup/contrib boolean true
I usually don’t setup a default user when I install servers. These settings just create a root user (with login capabilities) having the password ‘r00tme’. You will not want to use this preseed file unmodified if your machine is connected directly to the internet. You can also configure preseed with a crypted root password, but I still recommend changing it once the install is complete.
#################
# User Creation
#################
d-i passwd/root-login boolean true
d-i passwd/make-user boolean false
d-i passwd/root-password password r00tme
d-i passwd/root-password-again password r00tme
d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean true
d-i user-setup/password-weak boolean true
Setup Bcfg2 to do the post-install business (will be covered in a later post).
#######################
# Software Selections
#######################
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect
d-i pkgsel/include string openvpn vim openssh-server
d-i base-installer/install-recommends boolean false
d-i popularity-contest/participate boolean false
# don't try and do automatic updates; that's bcfg2's job
d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note
d-i preseed/late_command string \
in-target wget http://www.siriad.com/preseed/postinst.sh -O /root/postinst.sh; \
in-target /bin/bash /root/postinst.sh