Deploying Mass Ubuntu Installations

Recently, I've been working on a project to help my community by improving their technical infrastructure. My main priority with this project is to give the source to the people. To liberate them from the chains of Microsoft, and of closed source, proprietary software in general. The time is right, considering Android (the most popular OS in the world right now) runs on the Linux kernel. I would say that Android has inadvertently nudged the open source subculture into the center stage of tech.

But along with any other type of freedom, you must go out of your way a little to take advantage of it. Free software is not exempt. In other words, there will be a bit of a learning curve, but it will be well worth it. This is why I chose to use Ubuntu as the ambassador, because it's probably the most user friendly distro for people that are used to running Windows. It has a very friendly and large support community on the internet that can be found in forums such as askubuntu.com. It is always on the bleeding edge, receives very frequent updates, and supports the largest amount of hardware, right out the box, than any other Linux distribution I've used.

I met with several different clients to give them a rundown of the operating system and show them what is included by default. For the most part, my clients were pleasantly surprised with Ubuntu, and it seemed to exceed their expectations regarding ease of use, cross platform compatibility, and the secure nature which allows one to never buy antivirus again.

But installing Ubuntu on 100 computers is definitively a redundant, time consuming task. Automating the post installation configuration is very easy with bash, but automating the actual installation itself is not quite so easy. However, there are a few measures that one can take to make it go as quickly & smoothly as possible.

First of all, you're going to want a few copies of installation media. While DVD's are cheap, you may want to use USB discs instead. That way you can take advantage of the a persistence volume, which will save things like your wifi password, username, etc. These are things that you would otherwise have to enter many, many times, so it's worth it. Installations also go much faster when using USB, simply because USB transfers data much faster than optical drives. However, you should make sure that you have a couple of mini net install iso's on hand (these will fit on CD-R's). Sometimes a computer will have a graphics card that does not agree with the standard installation media and will not work. In these cases, you have to use the net installer, and it works 99% of the time.

The other thing you will need is a password generator script and some sticker labels. It would be pretty lazily irresponsible to configure 100 computers with the same password, wouldn't you say? Here's a good one:

#!/bin/bash
# Random password generator. Originally by jbsnake, modified by crouse to use Upper case letters as well.
# Now also does error checking and fails if the input isn't numerical integers or if no input is given at all.
# Modified by Darkerego to save output with description so you can remember what the password is for.
# For obvious security reasons, this is better managed as root.
#if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then
#   echo "Run it as root." 1>&2
#   exit 1
#fi

if [[ -z "$1" || $1 = *[^0-9]* ]];
  then
   echo " ";
   echo "      ######### COMMAND FAILED ########## ";
   echo "      USAGE: $0 passwordlength";
   echo "      EXAMPLE: $0 10";
   echo "      Creates a random password 10 chars long.";
   echo "      ######### COMMAND FAILED ########## ";echo " ";
   exit
  else
   if [[ "$1" -lt "6" ]]
   then echo "Your password is less than 6 characters in length."
         echo "This is a security risk. Suggested length is 6 characters or longer !"
   fi
   RIGHTNOW=$(date +"%R %x")
   pwdlen=$1
   char=(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X W Y Z)
   max=${#char[*]}
   for i in `seq 1 $pwdlen`
      do
           let "rand=$RANDOM % 62"
      str="${str}${char[$rand]}"
      done
   echo $str ##| tee -a passwords
fi
echo 'Enter a password description'
read pwinfo; echo $RIGHTNOW : $pwinfo : $str >> /root/passwords
echo 'Warning: output saved to passwords file'
exit




Finally, you should choose a desktop environment. I started with Gnome, but half way through decided to do the other half with Unity. I really am not a Unity fan, but it may be easier to understand for new users, and I don't want to throw people off and give them a bad first impression of Linux. First impressions are everything, even in the technological world.

It also helps to have a post installation script. This is the one I have been using. I originally wrote it to configure my VPS servers, and adapted it for desktop systems. There are a lot of security related kernel tweaks and whatnot that really should be turned on by default. That and installing/removing certain software is what this script is for. If I ever have to do this again, I am going to take the time to figure out how to completely automate the installation. I mean all I should have to do is stick a disc in a drive, walk away, and come back to a fully configured, fully installed system.