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I am trying to fully automate the testing of an ISO installer.

The ISO is bootable via ISOLINUX and can automatically install Oracle Linux 6 via Kickstart.

I have several label options in my isolinux.cfg file, each appending a different Kickstart file as follows:

foo
  kernel vmlinuz
  append ks=cdrom://isolinux/oel6-foo-ks.cfg 
bar
  kernel vmlinuz
  append ks=cdrom://isolinux/oel6-bar-ks.cfg

These labels help present the user with a boot menu, asking them what type of system to install (a foo or a bar).

Through VirtualBox command line, I can see how to create a VM with the ISO attached and power it on.

My problem is how to interact with the boot menu presented by the ISO?

In general, is there a way to automate the interaction with boot menus from the hypervisor command line?

If there is no proper way to interact with boot menus, could we perhaps bypass the boot menu and provide append ks options by hand via something like this:

VBoxManage unattended install --extra-install-kernel-parameters=params.

If possible, I would prefer to avoid changing the ISO (E.G. timeout-default to one menu option, or remove the menu entirely).

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1 Answer 1

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Use --auxiliary-base-path option

VBoxManage unattended install {name} --user={config['mcs']['user']} --password={config['mcs']['pwd']} \
    --auxiliary-base-path {aux}/ \
    --install-additions --iso={download} --country=SG  --post-install-template={cfg} --script-template={cfg}

You can then patch the isocfg files before starting the VM. I use this to use Ubuntu 20.04 autoinstall instead of Debian installer to patch isolinux-txt.cfg

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  • Thanks, this helped solve it for me: --script-template="$KSFILE" where KSFILE is the desired kickstart file, which has been extracted from the ISO on the host prior to booting the guest VM.
    – Neal Eastwood
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 11:41

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