How does vmware easy install work?

With VMWare Workstation Easy Install you can install an OS without any input. How does it do this? Is the su开发者_JAVA技巧pport for this built into the OS, or does vmware do some magic to automatically select the correct options?

The support is built into the OS. For example, in the case of Windows guests, VMware generates a floppy disk image containing a txtsetup.oem and some other files used for Windows' unattended-installation feature.

For a bit of further information:

The easy setup leverages the existing unattended setup technologies present in given OS distributions.

In the case of Windows it does the above. In the case of most Linux distributions it would do a kickstart file (or the distribution equivalent if it's supported) based on the information you provide during the setup wizard in VMware.

Most OSes (most, not all) provide some method for unattended setups. A lot of this is the byproduct of no one wanting the prospect of having to manually install multiple machines. You can look here for more information on kickstart files used in RPM distributions of Linux and here for more information on unattended installations of Windows