Michael, I think your proposal and compromise is more than reasonable. In a perfect world it would be nice to have everything fully automated where the installer would not have to do any legwork, but this is Windows we are talking about here so the installer who would be doing this type of install better get used to doing some legwork ;-)
Hopefully I will have a chance to try this out over the weekend, if I do I will post what I did to the list. As always thanks for all the time and effort you put into Cobbler! It is very much appreciated. On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Michael DeHaan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 > -- Regards, Brian _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
