I want to set up a network installation using PXE to install multiple OSes. I found this guide that does something similar:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PXEInstallMultiDistro
But what I'd like is to have 4 separate OS installations, on 4 different partitions. One option is to manually repeat the installation 4 times. I need to do this on 16 machines, so it would be great to be able to do this quickly and at once.
What I figured I could do is to manually install the partitions the way I want to and then save the image. I could then serve this image from the network, and run a form of dd
to image the drive.
How can I use PXE to run a dd
like command in this way? Do you think there are other ways of achieving this?
Possible approaches from comments
- Create a master image, and use
dd
from a PXE script - Use a Type 1 Hypervisor to have several OS images that can be selected at boot
- Use a Union FS. Store the modifications each group makes in their own partition. Or students come with their USB sticks that hold the modifications