Automated Installation of Debian GNU/Linux

If you ever had to set up a bunch of computers in the same way, be it for a lab, your local community space or something else entirely, you probably grew tired of clicking to the same dialogs over and over again too. In this workshop we are going to install Debian GNU/Linux on a few machines in an automated way using the installers preseeding feature. Lessons learned should be applicable to Ubuntu and other derivatives of Debian as well.

Depending on participants and their interests, topics such as installations over a network (PXE), possible approaches for further customizations (ansible, puppet) or a cursory comparison to other distributions (Fedora/kickstart) could be discussed while we are waiting for the installation.

You do not need any experience with custom Linux installations, but you should feel comfortable using the command line and editing text-based configuration files. A few test machines will be provided by c*lab.