VMWare has a feature when creating new VMs called Easy Install, that will show you a small wizard asking you the minimum things needed and then will install the entire OS without you needing to do anything.

When installing Ubuntu server, it only asks you the details of the default user (Full name, username, password and repeat password) and then installs ubuntu with the default options and packages.

I'd like to know if I can tell it to install some extra packages, run custom commands before finishing the installation or using another apt repository than the default one.

BTW if it matters, I'm using VMware Player 5.0.0 on Ubuntu 11.10 amd64, and I'm planning to install Ubuntu 11.10 amd64 server as a guest.


Question: What role does this past-participle take?
Answer: This is an instance of HAVE employed in a resultative sense&mdash;it&rsquo;s the sense at OALD 22: 


  22 (used with a past participle) have something done to suffer the effects of what somebody else does to you
   She had her bag stolen.  


The use is actually broader than OALD suggests; it as also employed to express positive results:  


  Now that we have that settled we can move on to the next item.  


This use goes all the way back to Old English, and was in fact the ancestor of the Perfect constructions which emerged in Middle English. In Old English the underlying syntax at that time was  HAVE + [Direct Object] + [PaPpl], with the PaPpl modifying the Direct Object. (We know this because nouns and adjectives had case endings in OE, and in this construction the PaPpl 'agrees' with the Direct Object). In Modern English, however, it is probably best understood as a reduced subordinate clause:


  He had [ [that] a curse [was] put on him. ]


I advance this parsing because in ModE there is also a use with a bare infinitive instead of a past participle; this is employed when the verb in question may be used both transitively and intransitively and the participle would be ambiguous:  


  She had her house burn down. ... which may be similarly parsed as She had [that] her house burned down.


Using active burn instead of passive burned here prevents this being parsed as transitive burned down used with causative HAVE, as in OALD's 23:


  23 (used with a past participle) have something done to cause something to be done for you by somebody else
   You've had your hair cut!
   We're having our car repaired.  


This use also supports use with an explicit subject, OALD's #24:  


  24 to tell or arrange for somebody to do something for you
   &bull; have somebody do something 
   He had the bouncers throw them out of the club.