James Cammarata wrote: > Do you know if all of the windows pxe boot files have to be in the root > directory of the tftp server? I would like to create subdirectories like > this: > > /tftpboot/ris/profiles/$profile_name/startrom.n12 -> /tftpboot/winxp.0 > /NTLDR -> /tftpboot/XPLDR > /winnt.sif > /winxp -> > /var/www/cobbler/ks_mirror/winxp > > And then the pxeboot line would be: > > label winxp > kernel ris/profiles/$profile_name/startrom.n12 > > label xpsystem1 > kernel ris/systems/$system_name/startrom.n12 >
You can't. startrom will look for a file in the TFTP root; unless you rewrite the location with tftpd.rules (or the like), it needs to be in the TFTP root. That said, when going down the rewrite road to have Windows pick up the appropriate file(s), it needs to ask for different files to begin with or the rewrite will cause it to pick up the same file after all. That said, you can sed -i -e 's/winnt.sif/12345.sif/g' NTLDR to specify an alternative to "winnt.sif". As such, you can have profiles based on these three files: startrom.n12 which points to NTDLR, NTLDR which points to winnt.sif, and winnt.sif Note how the latter two contain 5 chars (excluding the .sif suffix), and the name of startrom.n12 really doesn't matter. You could create a: xp321.0 from startrom.n12, sed -i -e 's/NTLDR/xp321/g' xp321.0 xp321 from NTLDR, sed -i -e 's/winnt.sif/xp321.sif/g' xp321 create a xp321.sif file Note that in this case I use Windows _XP_ _32_-bit Profile #_1_ as the five chars to use, but those are up to you. bootfont.bin, ntdetwxp.x86 can just live in the TFTP root since they can be shared and do not refer to other files. Now, creating a Cobbler profile or system can grab the originals, copy them anywhere, replace whatever they want to replace, and as such create "a unique" unattended installation. With unique filenames per profile however, you would not necessarily need to create a subdirectory in the TFTP root however it gets messy fast, so creating one subdirectory entirely managed by Cobbler probably makes the most sense, provided a rewrite rule for TFTP. I'm working on some more documentation about this and more different Windows unattended installations over the network / using PXE on http://www.kanarip.com/courses/ClassRoomManual-WindowsInstallationsOverTheNetwork-WindowsXP-Steps.html > The problem will arise if Windows expects the winnt.sif file to be in the > root of the tftp server, and not in the same directory as the startrom.n12 > file. We may be able to get around this by adding a rewrite rule for tftp > (as part of the cobbler sync process the rules file would be regenerated > and tftpd would be HUP'd), so that it hides the fact that things are not > all in the tftp root. > re-writing "/winnt.sif" to anything else will always cause you to eventually end up with the same file, just from a different location. > Doing it this way, we will be able to have custom .sif's for each > system/profile that is created. Otherwise, we will have to come up with > some way to modify the binaries in a unique way for each system, which I > really don't want. Modifying binaries is all you can do when all you get is binaries. For systems (and profiles), referring to one or the other startrom.n12 file would suffice to differentiate. The NTLDR and .sif used from that point can be set with a simple sed command like the few in my examples. This of course could also be done on-the-fly, possibly by Cobbler. Note that for Windows XP, using the startrom.n12 from Windows 2003 is basically your only option or it won't ever find txtsetup.sif although the error message will be garbled beyond recognition. The entire profile/system directory may be a link to > another folder somewhere in /var/www/cobbler, just for cleanliness reasons. > in.tftpd does not handle links very well. Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
