Michael DeHaan wrote: > Windows deployment is pain, sure enough, especially in a mixed > Windows/Linux environment. > > I've been thinking about how to solve this for some time, with a good > part of it posted to this list. > > Ultimately, we have to draw the line somewhere as Cobbler doesn't > really want to know a lot about Windows internals, but it should still > be easy to use. > > I think my proposal is thus: We make it easy to host and mass-deploy > Windows on VT hardware, but we make the installer do just a little bit > of legwork. > > Generally this seems to involve cracking open an ISO and inserting a > unattended.txt file in the "i386" (or other) subdirectory. Google > "unattended.txt" for info. I have yet to try this, though I figure > someone who has could confirm this is sufficient. > > Then, all that will be required is... > > cp windows_modified.iso /mnt/some_nfs_share/foo/windows.iso > cobbler image add --name=windows --file=nfs://server/../foo/windows.iso > > And on the client to install it: > > koan --virt --image=windows --virt-type=qemu --server=cobbler.example.org > > And that will kick off the install. > > The only catch is unattended.txt is up to the admin, but I think that > is a reasonable comprimise. Thoughts? > > I need to check if we can also do this with Xen Fullvirt if that > supports ISO based installs -- previously we only supported Xen FV via > PXE based installs. > > So yes, you will need VT hardware for this, but this could be a nice > tool in fully virtualizing Windows infrastructure on Linux, and > minimizing it. VT hardware is also becoming a lot more common place, > so this seems reasonable. If you don't have VT hardware, this does > work with qemu, > just rather slowly (and too slow for most production use). > > Comments welcome. > > The code for all of this is on the devel branch of cobbler and koan now. > > (NOTE: I believe Windows has some restrictions about what is legal to > run virtualized or not -- please read up on this and use the > appropriate Windows versions that allow this). > > --Michael > > >
Also, if someone who has used the sourceforge unattended stuff wants to make some docs on the Wiki of exactly how to build one of these answer files and add it to a CD (without the other references to Windows tools, preferably using tools like "mount" and "cp" :)), please do so. --Michael _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
