Umm yeah I can probably sort of help.
One of the projects I'm working on is a customised version of Ubuntu
8.04 (LTS is a good idea!) that in theory you can use to easily install
Ubuntu server with an asterisk voip server and a web UI for configuring it.
There's some quite good wiki page on this subject:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization
(that's the page for desktop installations - what I'm doing wiki ubuntu
server is a bit different)
Essentially there are two steps:
* create a customised ISO
* put the customised ISO on a usb stick and make it work.
As we've been finding the second step quite difficult, we've been
concentrating on the first step and testing the first bit on CDs -
there's no need to complicate things further at this stage.
Customising the install process is in theory fairly easy, unfortunately,
I had quite a few issues getting the Ubuntu-keyring package to function
correctly so at the moment I'm using a non-ideal solution whereby the
preseed late_command runs a script to install some packages.
It's still a very bad way of doing things and I'll have to go back and
see what it is that wasn't quite going right to start off with.
What you need is to preseed most of the Ubuntu installer (Alan linked to
some good documentation here), modify the image or do something to
install those extra packages and modifications, work out how to get the
customised image to boot from usb correctly.
Just to emphasise, I'm NOT an expert in this area, it just so happens
I've been banging my head about this sort of thing for the past few
weeks, so I know a little. :)
Would love to hear how you get on!
Tim
Phil Lewis wrote:
Hi,
Does anyone here know of any open source software solution that will
allow me to image an Ubuntu laptop on to a USB stick so that it can be
used by a technophobic teacher to rebuild a laptop when one goes bad?
The reimaging has got to be REALLY SIMPLE - e.g.:
1) Plug in usb stick
2) Power up netbook
3) Click or type 'yes' to confirm
4) Wait for a while
5) Plug out usb stick
6) Repower netbook
Some background: a primary school has asked me to design and rollout a
30-60 netbook solution for their classrooms. I am planning on an Ubuntu
9.04 build with specific educational extras. It will be somewhat
customised such that the kids/teachers will find it easy to use and
start apps etc (more concerned about teachers here of course). Since I'm
trying to get a basic third-party commercial support contract for the
setup, I want the support people to be able to tell the teachers to just
insert a USB stick to reimage a laptop if required.
I could go with a scripted PXE-boot based install system but given that
all these netbooks will we wireless I think this would make it harder
for staff if they have to find an ethernet cable before re-imaging
if/when required. Also with all the (documented) tweaks to the desktop
etc, PXE would be quite a tedious scripting task and probably not the
best solution given that the build will be almost static.
Any ideas/solutions welcome...
--
Phil Lewis
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