Mass installation of ubuntu servers

[b0redom]

Hi All,
I need to be able to rapidly deploy Ubuntu VMs for testing. Using Redhat Enterprise or Centos/Scientific I'd use Kickstart and Satellite/Spacewalk. It seems that Ubuntu only has limited Kickstart support, and their Spacewalk equivalent is Landscape (a paid for service), which has no free alternative.

Can anyone recommend any Ubuntu deployment/management tools? Am I missing something obvious?

Cheers...

b0redom

[Moby-Dick]

Have you looked at puppet ?

[b0redom]

Yeah, investigating chef and puppet, but ideally I want to be able to set up a config file, pull the trigger and have a VM ready to puppet/chef/salt up, so set DNS search suffixes, timezones, keyboard mappings etc without having to go through the painful click click click. I don't mind that it takes 15 or so mins to spin up a VM, it's just a pain I can't set it going and then go off for a cuppa.

[directhex]

Ubuntu has two installers: debian-installer (text mode) and Ubiquity (GUI)

If you use d-i, you can use a preseed file to automate the installer - this file can be in various places like on a CD or HTTP or NFS or courtesy of DHCP or whatevs.

Preseeding is the Debian equivalent to Kickstart.

[aidanjt]

Why don't you do an 'OEM' install (hit F4 at the boot menu iirc, if you're using the desktop image, hit escape when you see the ubuntu logo and icon with the keyboard icon underneath), install in a template VM, do whatever customisations you need to do, and just duplicate it as needed?