netson / ubuntu-unattended

Script to create unattended Ubuntu ISO

Unattended Ubuntu ISO Maker

This simple script will create an unattended Ubuntu ISO from start to finish. It will ask you a few questions once, and embed your answers into a remastered ISO file for you to use over and over again.

This script creates a 100% original Ubuntu installation; no additional software is added (aside from the VMWare OSP Tools, which are optional), not even an apt-get update is performed. You have all the freedom in the world to customize your Ubuntu installation whichever way you see fit. This script just takes the pain out of re-installing Ubuntu over and over again.

Consider using tools like chef or puppet to perform any additional software installations/configurations.

Created by: Rinck Sonnenberg (Netson)

Compatibility

The script supports the following Ubuntu editions out of the box:

• Ubuntu 12.04 Server LTS amd64 - Precise Pangolin
• Ubuntu 14.04 Server LTS amd64 - Trusty Tahr
• Ubuntu 16.04 Server LTS amd64 - Xenial Xerus
• Ubuntu 18.04 Server LTS amd64 - Bionic Beaver

Script automatically chooses the latest current image by parsing http://releases.ubuntu.com page.

This script has been tested on and with these three versions as well, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work with other Ubuntu editions. Other editions would require minor changes to the script though.

Usage

• From your command line, run the following commands:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netson/ubuntu-unattended/master/create-unattended-iso.sh
$ chmod +x create-unattended-iso.sh
$ sudo ./create-unattended-iso.sh

The script will keep a copy of the available iso in a work file for faster retrieval. If you wish to rebuild the menu by retrieving available versions from ubuntu.com:

$ sudo ./create-unattended-iso.sh rebuild

• Choose which version you would like to remaster:

 +---------------------------------------------------+
 |            UNATTENDED UBUNTU ISO MAKER            |
 +---------------------------------------------------+

 which ubuntu edition would you like to remaster:

  [1] Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS Server amd64 - Precise Pangolin
  [2] Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS Server amd64 - Trusty Tahr
  [3] Ubuntu 16.04.1 Server LTS amd64 - Xenial Xerus

 please enter your preference: [1|2|3]:

• Enter your desired timezone; the default is Europe/Amsterdam:

 please enter your preferred timezone: Europe/Amsterdam

• Enter your desired username; the default is netson:

 please enter your preferred username: netson

• Enter the password for your user account; the default is empty

 please enter your preferred password:

• Confirm your password:

 confirm your preferred password:

• Sit back and relax, while the script does the rest! :)

What it does

This script does a bunch of stuff, here's the quick walk-through:

• It asks you for your preferences regarding the unattended ISO
• Downloads the appropriate Ubuntu original ISO straight from the Ubuntu servers; if a file with the exact name exists, it will use that instead (so it won't download it more than once if you are creating several unattended ISO's with different defaults)
• Downloads the netson preseed file; this file contains all the magic answers to auto-install ubuntu. It uses the following defaults for you (only showing most important, for details, simply check the seed file in this repository):
• Language/locale: en_US
• Keyboard layout: US International
• Root login disabled (so make sure you write down your default usernames' password!)
• Partitioning: LVM, full disk, single partition
• Install the mkpasswd program (part of the whois package) to generate a hashed version of your password
• Install the genisoimage program to generate the new ISO file
• Mount the downloaded ISO image to a temporary folder
• Copy the contents of the original ISO to a working directory
• Set the default installer language
• Add/update the preseed file
• Add the autoinstall option to the installation menu
• Generate the new ISO file
• Cleanup
• Show a summary of what happended:

 installing required packages
 remastering your iso file
 creating the remastered iso
 -----
 finished remastering your ubuntu iso file
 the new file is located at: /tmp/ubuntu-14.04.2-server-amd64-unattended.iso
 your username is: netson
 your password is: 
 your hostname is: ubuntu
 your timezone is: Europe/Amsterdam

Once Ubuntu is installed ...

Just fire off the start.sh script in your users' home directory to complete the installation. This will ask you if you would like to add the puppetlabs repositories for puppet and its dependencies and if you would also like to setup the puppet agent

$ sudo ~/start.sh

That's it, enjoy! :)

Troubleshooting

If you run into any issues, please create an issue; I am by no means a shell/bash expert (far from it), and it took me a while to compile this script into something that's easy to use and just works, but I'm happy to help where I can! :)

Latest Changes

2020/01/26 The script has been enhanced to find available versions from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/. The enhancement will display versions that have iso available for server and amd64 architecture. This enhancement has been spot checked and the unatteneded iso has been used during the test.

License

MIT

ubuntu-unattended's Issues

Update for 18.04

Hi,

Any plans to add this to the next update?

Cheers

Not working on Hyper-V Gen 2

Hello.
Awesome script, its working perfect but on hyper-v only on Gen 1

Scenario
Gen 2 - disabled secure boot, boot from CD -> cannot boot and it will try to boot from network (defaul ubuntu doesn't have problem)

faulty logic checking if iso already exists

It only checks the $tmp folder. When the iso is download, it keeps it in the user's home directory.
An addition checksum logic should be implemented to make sure that the iso is correct.

Ubuntu desktop support?

Hi there,
I'm looking for an easier method to install Ubuntu 16 on computers in my office. This project looks like the perfect soloution, but your description says that it only supports Ubuntu Server "out of the box".
So the question is if it's possible to create an unattended Ubuntu desktop installation?

16.04 server - waits for manual Interactive Language Prompt at Grub -

Using this script to create an unattended install for a headless Atom NIC box.

Xenial 16.04 server base. Non-automated - waits for the Ubuntu Language Selection screen at grub/isoboot before even getting to Debian installer.

Repair pls. -"grep -w DIR |"

ubuntu-unattended/create-unattended-iso.sh

Line 86 in 204dbfa

for version in $(wget -qO - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ | grep -w DIR | grep -oP href=\"[0-9].* | cut -d'"' -f2 | tr -d '/'); do

for version in $(wget -qO - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ | grep -w DIR | grep -oP href=\"[0-9].* | cut -d'"' -f2 | tr -d '/'); do

to

for version in $(wget -qO - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ | grep -oP href=\"[0-9].* | cut -d'"' -f2 | tr -d '/'); do

Preseed ignores splash set to false

Hi @netson

Firstly, thanks for this tool, really useful!

I've found that when I boot from the ISO it's sitting on the Ubuntu splash screen waiting for me to select an installation option (Run AutoInstall, Boot from X, etc)

I have splash set to False (like in your example preseed) too as per the below;

d-i debian-installer/splash                                 boolean     false

Ideally when the VM comes online I'd like it to go straight into the Auto Installation from the ISO.

Any thoughts?

This is running Ubuntu 14.04.

Cheers!

Change configuration for Ubuntu server address

Bionic address shouldn't be:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/release/ubuntu-server-amd64.iso

It should be:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/18.04.3/release/ubuntu-18.04.3-server-amd64.iso

Desktop like load screen?

Any idea why when I use the script to create an installation and use the preseed, I get this load screen? https://i.cyanlab.io/YmMwNWNk.png

Also as a side note, any idea why I get a yellow bash when using the preseed script?

Source code origin question

Hi Rinck,

I encountered the same code, at least in its initial form, released in the same year but under the GPL3 license - https://github.com/hvanderlaan/ubuntu-unattended

The only trace to your work is a comment in the script "# copy the netson seed file to the iso", while the seed file is named differently. Wondering what is the netson seed, I found your repository. It looks like your repository was the origin of the hvanderlaan repository but I do not see any credits in his repository... Can you please comment?

Thanks,
Michael

Version after 18.04.5 not available.

Hi there, over in #61 I had asked about support for 20.04 + and it was indicated that the script should support this already. SO it seems like I may be running into an issue.

When I ran it, 18.04.5 was the latest release in the results. Any suggestions?

Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you.

failed to run preseeded command / wget

ubuntu-16.04.4-server-amd64-unattended.iso is failing to complete unattended install with this error message:

Request: luks encryption option

This may be the wrong way to go about it, but is there any option that could create a luks encryption unattended installer?

error not handled, file not found, or failed to download iso

I ran this script to set up an iso, and it failed, showing the following output (password censored). On investigating, it was not able to download the 14.04 image. It didn't show a progress meter, just said DONE, and didn't handle the wget error at all or check for a missing file.

I would like for this script to check for the existence of the downloaded file after the download and exit with an error message if it doesn't exist.

I was running this on a stock ubuntu 14.04 in a vagrant/virtualbox, as user vagrant using sudo. Once I figured out it wasn't downloading, I tried to make an ubuntu 16 iso and that started the download and showed a progress indicator.

Output from program when it failed to download:

 +---------------------------------------------------+
 |            UNATTENDED UBUNTU ISO MAKER            |
 +---------------------------------------------------+

 which ubuntu edition would you like to remaster:

  [1] Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS Server amd64 - Precise Pangolin
  [2] Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS Server amd64 - Trusty Tahr
  [3] Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server amd64   - Xenial Xerus

 please enter your preference: [1|2|3]: 2
 please enter your preferred timezone: Etc/UTC
 please enter your preferred username: ubuntu
 please enter your preferred password: 
 confirm your preferred password: 
 Make ISO bootable via USB: yes
 downloading ubuntu-14.04.3-server-amd64.iso:  DONE
-h  downloading netson.seed: 
 DONE
 installing required packages
 remastering your iso file
./create-unattended-iso.sh: line 161: /tmp/iso_new/isolinux/lang: No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file ‘/tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed’: No such file or directory
./create-unattended-iso.sh: line 173: /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
md5sum: /tmp/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /tmp/iso_new/isolinux/txt.cfg: No such file or directory
 creating the remastered iso
isohybrid: could not open file `/tmp/ubuntu-14.04.3-server-amd64-unattended.iso': No such file or directory
umount: /tmp/iso_org: not mounted
 -----
 finished remastering your ubuntu iso file
 the new file is located at: /tmp/ubuntu-14.04.3-server-amd64-unattended.iso
 your username is: ubuntu
 your password is: ????????
 your hostname is: ubuntu
 your timezone is: Etc/UTC

vagrant@mytestvm:~$ cd /tmp/
vagrant@mytestvm:/tmp$ ls
netson.seed

Unable to execute custom hostname-changing script as part of install process.

I'm trying to use your script to create an ISO that would automatically run a script upon installation (pick up the hostname from ESXi after SaltStack creates the VM and alter /etc/hosts with the new hostname).

I've been able to successfully move the script from the /preseed directory of the ISO into /root on the target system, but so far I haven't been able to have the script execute as part of the installation process.
(I even tried adding "chroot /target /root/ncc-hostname.sh" on the end of late_command, but that failed.)

Would that be at all possible with Ubuntu 18.04, or would that have to be done as part of the first boot?
I've attached my patches to your script and seed file as well as the custom script I want to execute as part of the installation process.

Thanks in advance!

ncc-set-hostname.sh.txt

create-unattended-iso_ncc.patch.txt

ncc.seed.patch.txt

github preseed download

line 105 needs to be changed to...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netson/ubuntu-unattended/raw/master/$seed_file

installation of Ubuntu 16.04 crashes

I get the following error when installing the unattended version:

http://imgur.com/awYT2ju

I just used the provided bash script and did not changed one thing. I used the image in VMware ESXI. The 16.04 version. I hope this helps :)

Update:

This problem is present in version 16.04 and 16.04.1, the 14.04 version does work

Ubuntu Desktop?

Can this be adjusted to work with Ubuntu Desktop as well? I have to do some automated deployments, and making the creation, and recreation of the iso so easy would be awesome!.

Thanks

"no such file" trying to create the modified iso

Got these errors while trying to create a ubuntu 22.04.4 unattended iso. Doesn't create the iso. Maybe ubuntu 22 is not supported?

edit: It probably IS because it's not supported. I created an unattended iso from ubuntu 18.04. I'll just install that and do a dist-upgrade.

edit2: I tried installing on VM and it does ask questions (select language, keyboard distritbution, etc.) so it's not really unattended... Am I doing anything wrong? Just executed the thing, selected ubuntu, answered the questions and it created this unattended iso...

create-unattended-iso.sh: line 217: /root/iso_new/isolinux/lang: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/isolinux/isolinux.cfg: No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file '/root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed': No such file or directory
create-unattended-iso.sh: line 235: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
md5sum: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /root/iso_new/isolinux/txt.cfg: No such file or directory
 creating the remastered iso
create-unattended-iso.sh: line 268: isohybrid: command not found
 -----
 finished remastering your ubuntu iso file```

Ubuntu 18.04 Doesn't Supported

Been testing the script for the pre-seeding of an Ubuntu 18.04 instance and it doesn't seem to work.
As some one has an inside about this?

Unattended does not work from USB

I love this as it works well, and I can boot a VM from ISO fully unattended, but when I write the ISO to USB, it boots the GNU Brub menu without the preseed option and only the default Linux install menu. I am using windows and Rufus to write the ISO to USB

Automatically install ubuntu

I can't get auto install ubuntu when i boot ubuntu unattend that created by script.

Boot hangs after install on KVM

I tried to install the unattended iso file created using the script in a KVM virtual machine.
Everything goes fine during the install, but the machine hangs on the first boot after install. The same problem doesn't happen when I install the standard server iso file. Also, the same unattended iso file works fine with VirtualBox. I first thought the error might be due to some intel_rapl message at the beginning, but it's not.

Download Error

+---------------------------------------------------+
| UNATTENDED UBUNTU ISO MAKER |
+---------------------------------------------------+

which ubuntu edition would you like to remaster:

[1] Ubuntu href="precise/" LTS Server amd64 - Precise Pangolin
[2] Ubuntu href="trusty/" LTS Server amd64 - Trusty Tahr
[3] Ubuntu href="xenial/" LTS Server amd64 - Xenial Xerus
[4] Ubuntu href="bionic/" LTS Server amd64 - Bionic Beaver

please enter your preference: [1|2|3|4]: 4
please enter your preferred timezone: Etc/UTC
please enter your preferred username: whittinghamj
please enter your preferred password:
confirm your preferred password:
Make ISO bootable via USB: yes
downloading ubuntu-href="bionic/"-server-amd64.iso: 11:52: DONE
Error: Failed to download ISO: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/href="bionic/"/release/ubuntu-href="bionic/"-server-amd64.iso
This file may have moved or may no longer exist.

You can download it manually and move it to /root/ubuntu-href="bionic/"-server-amd64.iso
Then run this script again.

Any ideas?

im new to this, so i want to add some other bash install, like ros and ssh open, how to add?

..

No iso-file available

All seems to work but it reboots when starting start.sh and after the reboot there are no iso-files.
Am I missing something but where is the iso-file located?
Before starting start.sh I can see Ubuntu16-iso

Reuse netson.seed

This is not really an issue but more of a question, and possibly a suggestion...
First of all, this is an awesome script; it's exactly what I am looking for.
Is there a way to update the netson.seed and recreate the unattended .iso with the updated seed file?
The reason I ask is because I want to be able to add services (SSH server, web server, etc.) to my unattended .iso file and the only way I would do that is by updating the seed file.
Perhaps you can add an option to the create-unattended-iso.sh script to ask what services you would like to install during the the unattend install? Or, perhaps add the option to the start.sh script to ask what software/services to install? Also, adding the option in the start script to configure network could be an good option also as a DHCP server is not often an option in some networks.
I have a network configuration script I have created to setup a static IP if you are interested in having.

UEFI automated install

Hi,

It works great, but when I try to use it with UEFI all the automated stuff doesn't work.

Is there any way enable UEFI and make it unattended?

Create script gets stuck

Hey guys,
I tried to generate a new iso file with ur create-unattended-iso.sh script.
It doesnt even get to show the available versions of ubuntu, it should show 20.04 as the newest version.

Has anyone tested/used it recently? Have u to modify anything before starting the script?
Thanks in advance

General question: How can we autorun that start script to be run on first boot?

First of all thanks for this, I love it.

Is there a way to first that start script, or any other script, to run on that first boot? Ideally the hostname and other tools to be ready to go after X or so minutes, then I know the device is up and has all that I need. For example disable screen blanking and other small configurations.

I've been using a disk image to do my cloning, but I find that is not ideal as I make changes over time, and then I need to do the disk image again and a few steps in between.

Suggestions?

support arm64

🥳🥳🥳

Create unattended ubuntu with SSH

Would like to install headless latest ubuntu 18.04 meaning that 100% unattended without monitor, keyboard and mouse. How should I modified netson.seed? With SSH install and apt etc? Thanks

Automatically detect newest version of 12.x, 14.x, or 16.x series

In #15, wget got a 404 instead of the iso, because Ubuntu had bumped 14.04.3 to 14.04.4. This will happen every few months as they release maintenance updates, requiring this script to make a code change to download the latest version.

It would be nice to figure out a method to automatically determine the latest version of each series. The naive way would be to try a version, and while it gets a 404, increment the revision number and try again.

This isn't ideal, but I don't know if Ubuntu has a way to programmatically get a version number. I've asked on stackexchange so that might help.

Illegal sed command on MacOS

Ubuntu is not downloaded due to an illegal sed option. See script output:

+---------------------------------------------------+
| UNATTENDED UBUNTU ISO MAKER |
+---------------------------------------------------+

create-unattended-iso.sh: line 63: lsb_release: command not found
which ubuntu edition would you like to remaster:

[1] Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS Server amd64 - Precise Pangolin
[2] Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS Server amd64 - Trusty Tahr
[3] Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS Server amd64 - Xenial Xerus
[4] Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS Server amd64 - Bionic Beaver

please enter your preference: [1|2|3|4]: 4
please enter your preferred timezone: Europe/London
please enter your preferred username: user
please enter your preferred password:
confirm your preferred password:
Make ISO bootable via USB: yes
downloading ubuntu-18.04.2-server-amd64.iso: sed: illegal option -- u
usage: sed script [-Ealn] [-i extension] [file ...]
sed [-Ealn] [-i extension] [-e script] ... [-f script_file] ... [file ...]

error messages when creating iso

there are error messages when running the script:

downloading ubuntu-23.10-live-server-amd64.iso: DONE
downloading netson.seed: DONE
installing required packages
remastering your iso file
./create-unattended-iso.sh: Zeile 217: /root/iso_new/isolinux/lang: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/isolinux/isolinux.cfg kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
cp: reguläre Datei '/root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed' kann nicht angelegt werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
./create-unattended-iso.sh: Zeile 235: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
md5sum: /root/iso_new/preseed/netson.seed: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
sed: /root/iso_new/isolinux/txt.cfg kann nicht gelesen werden: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
creating the remastered iso
isohybrid: could not open file `/root/ubuntu-23.10-server-amd64-unattended.iso': No such file or directory

finished remastering your ubuntu iso file
the new file is located at: /root/ubuntu-23.10-server-amd64-unattended.iso

also the created stick doesn't work as suspected, it stops at "select your language" (and all the other questions) and waits for input.

timezone has .. prefix

this is because on my machine, the softlink is as follows:
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 38 Jan 14 09:01 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York

so this causes the default answer in the prompt to be as follows:
please enter your preferred timezone: ..America/New_York

More options for Config

Hi, I’m quite new to this so sorry if it’s already been asked.
I’ve got a headless server i with to install Ubuntu on but it needs to be completely automated from boot to login. This means I need to be able to give it a static IP and include ssh packages to let me login to it when it’s finished. From the readme it seems like I need a screen and kb attached to be able to run start.sh, which defeats the purpose of creating the automated install in the first place. Is this the case, or will this script do what is required for me?
Thanks!

update ubuntu names

Line 67 needs to be updated to...

ubuntu-12.04.5-server-amd64.iso

Line 71 needs to be updated to...

ubuntu-14.04.2-server-amd64.iso

auto installer.... requires keyboard input?

Ok, I figured this was what I needed to automatically get me up and running. The problem was, the image built just fine (the download links all fail of course, ubuntu has moved folder locations) but it made the unattended iso no problems. it boots the unattended iso no problems.

why on earth is an UNATTENDED iso booting to a menu where you are required to select from the options:

Autoinstall NETSON Ubuntu Server
Install Ubuntu Server
Multiple Server install with MAAS
Check disc for defects
Test Memory
Boot from first hard disk
Rescue a broken disc

and of course it just hangs there. It does nothing. How is this unattended? if anything, this would be ATTENDED?

How to copy local files into image?

Hey,

thanks for the great project!
I would love to be able to add files from my local maschine into the installed linux. It is not a problem to copy the files to the image of course, but how do I get a file from the image copied into the users home folder during the install process?

Thanks a lot!
Tom

Add support for Ubuntu Mini ISO's

Add support for Ubuntu LTS Unattended installs including Mini images.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

Focal (20.04) isn't listed there yet, however can be found here: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/mini.iso

Cheers.

New menu build pulls in live isos

the exclude list (line 79) should be extended with |live
at line 91 the exclude list should be added
line 91: wget -qO - ${URL} | grep server | grep amd64 | egrep -v ${EXLCUDE_LIST} >/dev/null

version 20 not working

it's pulling the live iso and doesn't inject the auto install into txt.cfg i tried modifying the install script but couldn't get it to work correctly

the set command at 252:
sed -i "/label install/ilabel autoinstall\n\

is not running since there no install in the file:

default live
label live
menu label ^Install Ubuntu Server
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append initrd=/casper/initrd quiet ---
label live-nomodeset
menu label ^Install Ubuntu Server (safe graphics)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz
append initrd=/casper/initrd quiet nomodeset ---
label memtest
menu label Test ^memory
kernel /install/mt86plus
label hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0x80

Newer versions

Hi there, any plans to support 20.04+?

Thank you.