Linux Unattended Install

Software & Operating Systems Linux
1

Are there any decent tutorials for setting up an unattended/automated install of Fedora?
My current config is:
AMD 2970wx on an Asrock TaiChi x399 MB with 128 GB RAM.
Running a PNY XLR8 Geforce 1660 rev a1
My ultimate goal’s are:
Learn Linux and get LPIC Certified.
Continue to learn build upon my automation experience across platforms.

2

You can use Kickstart to automate installation of a Fedora installation
Kickstart file is basically a Linux version of Windows’ Answer file
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/rawhide/install-guide/advanced/Kickstart_Installations/

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3

Thanks, I wil start reading…

aDruid

4

@thunderysteak’s suggestion is probably right if you want to automate a Fedora install.

However, you might learn more by doing it “manually”.

It’s not that difficult to install(“bootstrap”) Fedora from a live environment - after all, that’s exactly what the installer does.
If you’ve ever setup Fedora in a chroot, it’s basically the same, expect that you install a bootloader and kernel as well.
You could just put all of that in a bash-script, detect & format a disk by ID, and run that automated in probably any live Linux.

I’m not very familiar with Fedora(more of a Debian guy here), but the basic outline of a script like this would be:

  • detect correct disk, partition disk, mount disk
  • Initialize a RPM db on a different root
  • Download & Install Fedora release package + other required packages to different root(using rpm)
  • Configure fstab, network, hostname, users, etc.
  • Setup GRUB(I don’t know Fedora well enough to tell you if just installing the correct packages will work, I suspect you’ll need to install manually)
  • (…)
  • Profit?

It’s not trivial, but it’s definitely doable!

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5

If you want to skill up on automated Linux installs, I’d suggest to look into pxe automated installs https://www.lisenet.com/2021/install-and-configure-a-pxe-boot-server-for-kickstart-installation-on-centos/ and/or packer … The first is more used for bate metal installs, the second for everything that has to do with creating is images in pretty much any form and fashion

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