I'm trying to setup several PCs with a preseeded copy of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So far, I've managed to use my preseeded USB drive for about 10 devices, but now I've got some older ones that just won't boot into the USB at all.
Here's what I do:
- Download Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
- Mount the .ISO
- Copy over all the files
- unzip /install/initrd.gz
- put in my preseed.cfg using
echo preseed.cfg | cpio -H newc -o -A -F initrd - zip initrd.gz again
- burn everything to a USB using dd
- put usb into device
- boot from usb
Now this has worked like a charm so far. Just boot the device and watch it go. No issues at all.
These older devices have very basic BIOS settings. I looked for stuff like secure boot, thinking that would be the issue, but no luck. Best I can do is disable the ports...
Just out of curiosity I got a new USB drive and burned the original Ubuntu .ISO to it, and to my surprise those devices now boot into that without an issue, but naturally now the automation of my tasks is gone. I replicated my usual steps to preseed the installation and after putting the preseed into initrd.gz it stops working again.
I can see the USB in BIOS with the correct name and size, but when I select it as the boot device the PCs just skip it and boot straight from their internal HDDs, where Windows10 is installed that I actually wanted to replace.
What really stuns me about this problem is that it is working just fine on some PCs, but not on some others. This leads me to believe that the burning of the ISO to the drive was successful, and that the issue must be somewhere else.
Any ideas?
