How to perform unattended installations of Ubuntu Desktop?

Question

I know that there is a lot of information about headless and unattended installation of Ubuntu servers. But I need to install the desktop version of Trusty on a lot of machines and I would like to automate that. With the Kickstart and Preseed manuals I could not bring up an unattended install of Ubuntu 14.04. Desktop 64-bit.

Is somewhere out there a manual that I did not find? It would be great to get some help. I already spent a couple of hours on this.

My txt.cfg in /isolinux/:

default autoinstall
label autoinstall
     menu label ^Autoinstall Ubuntu POS-Server
     kernel /install/vmlinuz
     append preseed/file=/cdrom/preseed/pos.seed debian-installer/locale=de_DE console-setup/layoutcode=de initrd=/install/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=16384 ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg  root=/dev/ram rw --

My pos.seed in /preseed/:

d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition \
select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
d-i partman/confirm boolean true

d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8
d-i debian-installer/splash boolean false
d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i console-setup/layoutcode string de
d-i console-setup/variantcode string

### Network
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto

## Keyboard configuration
d-i keyboard-configuration  keyboard-configuration/layoutcode       string  de
d-i keyboard-configuration  keyboard-configuration/layout   select  German
d-i keyboard-configuration  keyboard-configuration/variant  select  German
d-i keyboard-configuration  keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap       select  de

#### Advanced options
### Running custom commands during the installation
# This first command is run as early as possible, just after
# preseeding is read.
# if old filesystem present installer asks for unmount
d-i preseed/early_command string umount /media

### Package selection
# Individual additional packages to install
# Install the Ubuntu desktop.
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-desktop
d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server build-essential
# Policy for applying updates. May be "none" (no automatic updates),
# "unattended-upgrades" (install security updates automatically), or
# "landscape" (manage system with Landscape).
d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none
# Enable extras.ubuntu.com.
d-i apt-setup/extras    boolean true

My ks.cfg in /:

#Generated by Kickstart Configurator
#platform=AMD64 or Intel EM64T

#System language
lang en_US
#Language modules to install
langsupport en_US
#System keyboard
keyboard de
#System mouse
mouse
#System timezone
timezone Europe/Berlin
#Root password
rootpw --disabled
#Initial user
user ****** --fullname "******" --iscrypted --password ******************
#Reboot after installation
reboot
#Use text mode install
text
#Install OS instead of upgrade
install
#Use CDROM installation media
cdrom
#System bootloader configuration
bootloader --location=mbr locale=de_DE console-setup/ask_detect=false keyboard-configuration/layoutcode=de
#Clear the Master Boot Record
zerombr yes
#Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel 
#Partitioning
part / --fstype ext4 --size 1 --grow --asprimary
part swap --recommended
part /boot --fstype ext4 --size 256 --asprimary
#System authorization infomation
auth  --useshadow  --enablemd5 
#Network configuration
network --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0
#Firewall configuration
#firewall --disabled 
#Do not configure the X Window System
skipx
#custom packages for installation
%packages
openssh-server
ubuntu-desktop

Solution

There is no real difference between server and desktop version despite the package-set being installed.

There is a meta-package called "ubuntu-desktop", bringing all packages installed with Ubuntu Desktop. There are also meta-packages for Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu available in default repositories.

Just use a tutorial for Ubuntu server and add this package to your kickstart-file instead of server-related packages (there are other meta-packages like "openssh-server" being installed depending on what services are chosen during installation). If none are chosen (or listed in kickstart-file), you get a minimal Ubuntu-system without anything.

Example for the relevant part in Preseed-file:

### Package selection
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-desktop
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect lamp-server, print-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect kubuntu-desktop

Example file found here

same for Kickstart-file:

%packages
ubuntu-desktop

Don't use @ubuntu-desktop, what means installing a package-group, but in deb-world a package-group is a meta-package which pulls other packages as dependencies.

Comments

[Timo]

with this setup I was able to set up a server but not a desktop

[Timo]

ok...I see, I will try to get my server-install to automatically install ubuntu-desktop package.

[Timo]

Sorry, it is not possible to just add a ubuntu-desktop to either the kickstart nor the preseed file. it just does not work.

[Christian]

I've just added more information to the answer. I think you are confused by packagegroup and metapackage. I also don't see "ubuntu-desktop" listed in your preseed-file. It would be nice to know what you exactly mean with "just does not work". What kind of system with what problem do you get after installing this way?

[Timo]

I updated my file-examples another time. ubuntu-desktop was there in the preseed-file. I removed the @ from the kickstart-file. I was trying out several different options. In the end it always installs automatically but always the server without installing the ubuntu-desktop and not setting my keyboard to german layout. I need the Desktop to start automatically.

[Christian]

Is it not being installed or only not automatically started? Did you install with that "skipx"-parameter in Kickstart-file?

[Timo]

I used the above files but with the @ before ubuntu-desktop and without network. Now it works! Obviously I needed internet-connection to download desktop-data and the @ was wrong as you said.