Ubuntu VM auto installation

Installing a fresh Ubuntu, or any other Linux distribution, on a new system is quite forward. The installer asks you a few question about your country, keyboard, network, ... . Then it installs all the required packages on the system, and makes it bootable.

However, when playing with VMs (Virtual Machines), you may wish to install your distribution many times ; in which case the installation process (with the questions to answer) becomes somehow tedious.

There are several approaches to deal with this issue. This post will deal with the automatic installation of an Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, by using Debian preseeding mecanism with virt-install (virtinst package).

An alternative approach would be to do a manual full installation, then making several copies of the installed image. Each copy will be customized to be used for a new VM. These two methods have their pros and cons, and can be used together.

A running system with libvirt and virtinst packages is required. The key of a preseed automatic installation is to have the good preseed.cfg file. This file will provide the Debian installer (also used by Ubuntu) with all the information it requires to install and configure the system, without the need to ask any question.

Preseed file

Here's my generic preseed.cfg file. It is a mix of Debian's example-preseed file and parameters gathered using Debian's suggested method after a manual installation:

debconf-get-selections --installer > file
debconf-get-selections >> file

The password for the vmuser user has to be set, by changing the current CRACKMECRACKM encrypted password to a valid one. A valid crypted password can be generated with the following command:

python -c 'from crypt import crypt; print crypt("MYPASSWORD", "SALT")'

Some other parameters may be customized, like locale, user name, ...

Empty image creation

Then we need to create an empty disk that will be used to install the system. A 5GB disk should be enough for a minimal Ubuntu installation (depending on one's requirements).

qemu-img create vm.qcow2 5G

virt-install

Installing Ubuntu Precise on a VM can now be launched with the following unique command (to be customized):

virt-install \
--name vm \
--ram 128 \
--location http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise-proposed/main/installer-i386/ \
--disk vm.qcow2,bus=virtio \
--graphics vnc,keymap=local,listen=0.0.0.0,port=5900 \
--network user,model=virtio \
--initrd-inject preseed.cfg

Note that the precise-proposed Ubuntu distribution is used instead of the standard precise. It addresses a bug that makes the installation freeze for 10+ minutes during the components download phase.

After some 30 minutes the system installation should be completed.