[vbox-dev] proposal: Unattended Guest OS Installs for VirtualBox ?

[Alexey Eromenko]

Status update:
My work on 'vbox-unattended' is nearly done.

I wrote support for 5 backends:
1. Windows NT5
2. Windows NT6
3. Red Hat (kickstart)
4. Debian (preseed)
5. SUSE (autoyast)

+ docs / research paper.

Download here:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46798&p=211187#p211187

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VirtualBox integration:

Since this feature is supposed to be noob-friendly, it would be a
waste to keep it as 3rd party project.

Red Hat and SUSE backends do not even require floppy, which means they
can be integrated into VirtualBox.

About GUI integration with VirtualBox -- I'm really not sure...

Should it be separate menu "Machine->New Unattended VM"
-or-
a new checkbox / option within "Machine->New"
-or-
a new checkbox / option within "First Run" wizard ?

One thing is clear:
Long-term releases will probably require separate OS type.
i.e. Red Hat Enterprise Linux must separate into "Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3" / 4/5/6.
same for SLE & Debian.
Older RHEL do not support SATA, plus the kickstart script gets
on-the-fly patching to meet specific version.

Not sure about the fast-moving targets such as 'Fedora'.
Rolling releases I don't even attempt to target, as it looks like an
exercise in futility... (but your mileage may wary)

-- 
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"