We have several remote target machines running Ubuntu 12.04. Is it possible for Ansible to install Ubuntu 18.04 on the target machines from an ISO? I’m trying to avoid an update to 14.04 and then 16.04 and then 18.04. I’d like to avoid any updates at all and just do a fresh install of 18.04.
If it’s possible, could you briefly tell me the procedure?
Thanks!
Todd
We have several remote target machines running Ubuntu 12.04. Is it
possible for Ansible to install Ubuntu 18.04 on the target machines from an
ISO? I'm trying to avoid an update to 14.04 and then 16.04 and then
18.04. I'd like to avoid any updates at all and just do a fresh install of
18.04.
main question: how were they setup up at first?
If it's possible, could you briefly tell me the procedure?
what you might want to search if there isn't another way to properly
provision them is "ubuntu remote installation" or "debian remote
installation" and learn from any of the described variants.
E.g. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Remote
https://serverfault.com/questions/208128/how-to-remotely-install-linux-via-ssh
https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/apds03.html.en
http://www.underhanded.org/papers/debian-conversion/remotedeb.html
Which you should learn to use on a test setup first ;^)
There variants to that procedure:
* you boot the (net) installer
* you install a minimal installation into a free / to be freed partition
and boot from that --
You could use ansible to automate the necessary steps, but its niche is
more towards configuration management -- not provisioning of a basic OS.
Honestly if you have to ask that question you should first try very hard
to get access to that machine physically or via another way:
how were these machines setup in the first place?
Otherwise I wish you good luck and a good learning experience 
We have some remote machines at hetzner and they provide a rescue system
and pre-configured OS-variants. You can even insert your SSH public key
via their management dashboard. Booting into a rescue system of your
choice you can use an install script for several distributions where you
can customize the provisioning.
Regards,
Benjamin
Hi Benjamin,
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Our goal is to update a few hundred hosts at different customer’s sites all over the country. We’re hoping to not have to have any physical presence.
I’ve been looking at a program called FOG. One problem I’m seeing is that the bios of our target machines are not set up for PXE booting which FOG needs. I don’t think the bios can be changed without physical presence. I could be wrong.
Our target machines are Ubuntu 12.04 installations on a normal PC without any kind of out-of-band management provisions. They were initially set up at our factory.
I’ll keep looking at the possibility of creating a new partition in the target hosts and installing a lite OS, booting into the new OS (can it be done remotely?), installing Ubuntu 18.04 in the original partition, fix network and grub settings, and booting into the new 18.04 OS. Our targets are not on the internet so I’ll have to create an Ubuntu repository with all the dependencies and make it available on the customer’s networks.
We have two things going for us: The target host hardware is all the same and they are configured all the same. And we have SSH access into all the targets.
If you have any more thoughts, I’d appreciate any ideas!
Thanks,
Todd