[arch-releng] PXEboot + unattended install

[Greg Sutcliffe]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been covered before - I've been Googling for the
few days, and found a lot of info on both of these topics - but not
both together.

As far as I can see, it's possible to boot an ArchLinux install
instance over PXE (using the archboot project). I've managed to get
that working just fine. I also understand that it's possible to pass a
prewritten script to AIF to handle the actual install (and potentially
the post-install steps?). I've not actually tried to write one of
these yet, but it's next on my todo list.

It seems the last tiny link to integrate the two is missing - I cannot
find any documentation on how to get the installer to automatically
execute an AIF script. I did find a slideshow (http://goo.gl/6I8QP)
which on Slide 13 states this integration is a "Missing Feature" - is
that still the case?

As a bit of background (since this is my first post to the list) - I'm
working heavily with Foreman (www.theforeman.org) which is a
provisioning system for automatically deploying and installing
machines. Since I'm a keen Arch user, I'm trying to add Arch support
to Foreman. I have now added the PXE side of things (which works
great), and I'm more than happy to help write/test any solutions to
the above problem, since I can now re-image (via PXE) my Arch hosts
with about 4 clicks in Foreman's interface :)

Looking forward to learning more about this :)

Cheers,
Greg