1. Download 5.0.2 netinst cd

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian-cd/5.0.2/i386/iso-cd/debian-502-i386-netinst.iso

2. Mount ISO to folder called iso

mkdir iso
mount -o loop -t iso9660 debian-502-i386-netinst.iso iso

3. Extract to new folder called iso2

mkdir iso2
rsync -a -H –exclude=TRANS.TBL iso/ iso2

4. Changed menu to load SSH on boot

/iso2# nano isolinux/txt.cfg

REMOVE:
remove “menu default” from “label install”

ADD:
label netinstall
menu label ^Network Install Over SSH
menu default
kernel /install.386/vmlinuz
append auto=true vga=normal file=/cdrom/preseed.cfg initrd=/install.386/initrd.gz locale=en_US console-keymaps-at/keymap=us

CHANGE:
“default install” to “default netinstall”

5: Edit both files below and change “timeout 0” to “timeout 5” to make it auto select netinstall
nano isolinux/isolinux.cfg
nano isolinux/prompt.cfg

5. Create preseed.cfg file

nano iso2/preseed.cfg

PASTE BELOW to preseed file:

#### Contents of the preconfiguration file
### Localization
# Locale sets language and country.
d-i debian-installer/locale select en_US

# Keyboard selection.
d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select us

### Network configuration
# netcfg will choose an interface that has link if possible. This makes it
# skip displaying a list if there is more than one interface.
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto

# Any hostname and domain names assigned from dhcp take precedence over
# values set here. However, setting the values still prevents the questions
# from being shown, even if values come from dhcp.
d-i netcfg/get_hostname string newdebian
d-i netcfg/get_domain string local

# Disable that annoying WEP key dialog.
d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
# The wacky dhcp hostname that some ISPs use as a password of sorts.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_hostname string radish

d-i preseed/early_command string anna-install network-console

# Setup ssh password
d-i network-console/password password install
d-i network-console/password-again password install

6. Recreate mf5sum.txt file

md5sum `find -follow -type f` > md5sum.txt

7. Create new iso image

mkisofs -o ../custom_install.iso -r -J -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat ../iso2

and your new image is ready to burn. This autoloads everything and does to SSH screen

Hope this helps.

Can you please post somewhere your method with preseed.cfg, because i need to do install on remote computer as well.

Regards,
Ivan

I needed a way to do that on a remote machine.
So I take this howto, setup a “preseed.cfg”, put it with a script taken from another website into the “initrd.gz”
and dang after 2 minutes the remotemachine open ssh and I can finish the setup remotely.

But many thx for this howto.
I read long around the web to finish all. But this was the best I found to make it with ssh.

Best Regards and feel free to give a mail. I will send u the final cut. ;-)

Ruediger Lampe

I´m in the clever situation that I gave away my only monitor in the house you see, because I only use laptops, and now, when I´m soon going to upgrade my servers, I have o drag them down to my LCD-TV to get a freaking monitor during install!!!

:/