2

I am searching for a way to create a custom ISOs for (K)Ubuntu desktop to provision physical machines (like laptops), esp. with lower RAM, through PXE / Netboot. Goal is a mostly completely unattended install.

I had some issues with default ISOs (too large, ISO download fails with "no space left") as well as with "netboot" images which seem to not have been there for quite a while, now coming back (their kernels may lack drivers, esp. for network cards). Even if the latter could be hacked around, still it would be better to generate an own ISO.

Question 1: Is there a tool for ISO customization for Ubuntu,like mksusecd for SUSE distributions?

Ideally, such tool would allow exclusion of some groups of packages (office, browsers, desktop environments...) through a cmd one-liner, repacking the ISO as desired.

Question 2: Apart from specialized tools: if I follow the "normal" procedure under LiveCDCustomization - Community Help Wiki (which seems quite a tedious task) - is there an easy approach to exclude such package groups without breaking things?

Maybe someone even has a script to automate this?

P.S.: I am aware of this and similar answers, but unfortunately everything I could find was quite dated with no active development...

OpenUser
  • 31

1 Answers1

0

Question 1: Is there a tool for ISO customization for Ubuntu,like mksusecd for SUSE distributions?

Cubic is the most popular. But all are 3rd party and need you to trust its creator. Most also start from a desktop ISO.

I would suggest to do it yourself and start from a server version using autoinstall (link has a examples). It is small and supports yaml. Biggest advantages: it is re-usable on newer Ubuntu's plus it is not 3rd party.

From the Ubuntu discource:

Introduction

Since version 20.04, the server installer supports automated installation mode (autoinstallation for short). You might also know this feature as unattended, hands-off, or preseeded installation.

Autoinstallation lets you answer all those configuration questions ahead of time with an autoinstall config, and lets the installation process run without any interaction.

Up to this part you can make it as generic as possible and you can then add all the packages you want to make a desktop. What desktop is up to you but these packages do not need to be part of the ISO and can be fetched on-line making the ISO rather small. You just add, for instance, ubuntu-deskop for a total desktop or if you want you could add Ubuntu minimal, or if you are really brave add packages yourself to build your own desktop (without anything you would consider clutter :) )

Rinzwind
  • 299,756