One time "firmware" upgrade script

Question

I was wondering how you could make a script so that on first boot it changes files to a specific parameters? So it would be like if I just installed a fresh kernel. I want to run a script once and that script will change /etc/network/interfaces to have preset static IPs and to add a message of the day message. Other items such as creating new users could be added to this script to automate the process a little.

Is it possible to have this script be installed with the kernel so it runs on first boot and then all settings get set?

Answer 1

"@fkraiem Most likely not. I am installing a version of ubuntu and would like to make changes automatically versus doing the same process several times for different boards"

You could write a Bash script that, when run, makes the changes you want. Then you can put it on a USB stick and run it with every new install.

(this is all in a terminal, I use gnome-terminal) For instance, you could have a template interfaces file that is what you want all of them to look like, and then you could write a script file like so: gedit scriptfile

#!/bin/bash
sudo cp ./interfaces /etc/network/interfaces
sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

Then you could run chmod +x scriptfile to make it executable.

Then you put the scriptfile and the interfaces template file onto a flash drive and when you install Ubuntu on a new "board" you can open the flash drive and run the scriptfile and it will replace the current /etc/network/interfaces file with the template one and then open it in Gedit for you to customise the IP address.