Preseeding provides a way to set answers to questions asked during the installation process, without having to manually enter the answers while the installation is running. This makes it possible to fully automate most types of installation and even offers some features not available during normal installations.
Preseeding is not required. If you use an empty preseed file, the installer will behave just the same way as in a normal manual installation. Each question you preseed will (if you got it right!) modify the installation in some way from that baseline.
There are three methods that can be used for preseeding: initrd, file and network. Initrd preseeding will work with any installation method and supports preseeding of more things, but it requires the most preparation. File and network preseeding each can be used with different installation methods.
The following table shows which preseeding methods can be used with which installation methods.
| Installation method | initrd | file | network |
|---|---|---|---|
| CD/DVD | yes | yes | yes[a] |
| netboot | yes | no | yes |
| hd-media (including usb-stick) | yes | yes | yes[a] |
[a]
but only if you have network access, and set | |||
An important difference between the preseeding methods is the point at which the preconfiguration file is loaded and processed. For initrd preseeding this is right at the start of the installation, before the first question is even asked. For file preseeding this is after the CD or CD image has been loaded. For network preseeding it is only after the network has been configured.
Obviously, any questions that have been processed before the preconfiguration file is loaded cannot be preseeded (this will include questions that are only displayed at medium or low priority, like the first hardware detection run). Section B.2.2, “Using boot parameters to preseed questions” offers a way to avoid these questions being asked.
In order to avoid the questions that would normally appear before the preseeding occurs, you can start the installer in “auto” mode. This delays questions that would normally be asked too early for preseeding (i.e. language, country and keyboard selection) until after the network comes up, thus allowing them to be preseeded. It also runs the installation at critical priority, which avoids many unimportant questions. See Section B.2.3, “Auto mode” for details.