[Unattended] Re: fixing mailing list Reply to: address?
On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 08:47:59AM +0200, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote: Is it possible that someone fixes the Reply to: address of this mailing list? It doesn't appear broken to me. Now it doesn't have any Reply to: address, and when someone presses the Reply button in a mail client, only the original sender gets the mail; you have to add [EMAIL PROTECTED] address manually if you want the mail to reach the list. And that is how it's supposed to work. If you want to reach the list, you can either click 'Reply to List' or (if your mail client doesn't provide such a feature) then 'Reply to All' and modify the recipient list by hand. The 'Reply' button (and, hence, the Reply-To field) is for sending a message to the author of the message. The list is not the author of the message. By munging the Reply-To field, you will possibly break what the author of the message specified as where they wanted personal replies sent. It's one of the problems of using e-mail (an inherently point-to-point protocol) as a many-to-many mechanism. But there are proper procedures in place to deal with these problems, and they involve the List-Post (or equivalent) and Mail-Followup-To headers. Unfortunately, the standards aren't universally implemented. However, there are freely available and functional e-mail clients which do, so there really isn't much excuse for not being able to just Reply to List, (apart from ridiculous corporate e-mail client policies). - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[Unattended] Re: Re: Unattended without DHCP
On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 08:37:16AM +0100, Oliver Kuhl wrote: Matthew Palmer wrote: On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 03:33:44PM +0100, Jose Buzon Zarzuela wrote: I read about this projekt. It is pretty cool and makes the life of admins easier. But i have the following problem: We have a domain without a dhcp. As far as i read to make the installation you need a dhcp. Is there any possebilty to give directly at the booting an ip adress so that you don?t need a dhcp server. Possibly, but not really. It would be possible to hack the boot disk to ask for an address or something, I guess, but it's not worth the effort. Just install a DHCP server -- they're really handy for a wide variety of things. If you've got enough machines that the hassle of setting up unattended is worthwhile, then you've got too many machines to manually manage IP address assignments. DHCP is really easy to set up. But if you i.e. want to install a machine over a DSL or Cable connection, you will get problems because - iirc - dhcp does not work over several networks if you don't use a special configuration for the routers/switches. SMB doesn't work over routed networks without special configuration of the machine itself, so you're going to have to do a lot of manual configuring from *very* early in the piece. I don't envy you the job. I wouldn't expect to see the code necessary to comprehensively configure Unattended to operate in this environment real soon -- it's a lot of work for the developers, for a situation which is fairly uncommon and can be easily remedied by the user. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[Unattended] Re: Unattended without DHCP
On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 03:33:44PM +0100, Jose Buzon Zarzuela wrote: I read about this projekt. It is pretty cool and makes the life of admins easier. But i have the following problem: We have a domain without a dhcp. As far as i read to make the installation you need a dhcp. Is there any possebilty to give directly at the booting an ip adress so that you don?t need a dhcp server. Possibly, but not really. It would be possible to hack the boot disk to ask for an address or something, I guess, but it's not worth the effort. Just install a DHCP server -- they're really handy for a wide variety of things. If you've got enough machines that the hassle of setting up unattended is worthwhile, then you've got too many machines to manually manage IP address assignments. - Matt -- The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, that way you don't get your knife caught in his ribs... -- Peter da Silva signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[Unattended] Re: Unattended- IRC channel?
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 10:53:12AM -0800, Jimmy R. wrote: Is there an IRC channel for this mailing list? I was thinking it would perhaps give us a good method to help one another out and exchange configuration ideas and concepts. In what way does a mailing list not give us a good method to help one another out [etc]? Furthermore, a mailing list is typically archived for the ages, and people who aren't tied to their computers at the same time can still communicate. Having been involved in projects which coordinated via mailing lists and projects which were based in IRC, I've come to the conclusion that a project without a thriving mailing list tends to atrophy, regardless of how much IRC action there is. I'm not sure why that is, but I've observed it over about 15 projects (split between the two communication methods). - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[Unattended] Re: unattended software testing methodology
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 05:57:51PM +, stephen mc murray wrote: I'm a student in my final year of my computer networking honers degree. I have decided to do my thesis on unattended installations. The initall research stage was simple enough (hence how I came across this forum) however the two software packages that will be used in the live test will be unattended and notons ghost However Im having difficulty coming up with a suitable methodology to use in order to conclude what package is more favourable. I supose some important factors are cost, time taken and ease of use, but how much value would you put on each one Ease of customisation. That's my big one. Cost is a nice differentiator, but Freedom is better (it's a happy coincidence that people who force you to pay money tend to lock you down, too, and vice versa). Time required for an install is less important to me, because it's unattended (although an install that took a week would be less useful). Ease of use is only interesting to me to a point, because I'm pretty technical and can work most things out given time. Flexibility and openness are my big features, and Unattended comes out as the *big* winner in both those categories. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[Unattended] Re: Unattend problem
On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 08:25:49AM -0500, Wolfe, John wrote: We are working on getting an unattended installation set up by using a floppy disk to install from the network. Our problem is, we have multiple locations and servers from which an unattend can pull the install from. 2 things happen, our techs in our remote location will have the install replicated to their server, so we want it to automatically map a drive to the correct server at their location, but using the same floppy, we use it at our location to map to our server. DHCP options on each locations' server to point users at the correct server. No hard-wiring of options on the floppy at all. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Unattended] office2k: remove some components
On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 11:28:49AM +0200, Julien TOUCHE wrote: i'm looking for a way to install office2k without some part like, for example, access, outlook (or maybe force some extra part o install). it seems an administrative install setup take all and i've not managed to use Remove env with msiexec to limit the install. any ideas ? Create an Administrative installation point using the Office Resource Kit. - Matt -- Ah, the beauty of OSS. Hundreds of volunteers worldwide volunteering their time inventing and implementing new, exciting ways for software to suck. -- Toni Lassila, in the Monastery signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Unattended] Auto eject linux based boot CD?
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 03:05:37PM +0200, Gerhard Hofmann wrote: when booting from the linux based CD, you get some message like ... if running from CD you can eject it now ... which is gone some seconds later. Wouldn't it better to stop at this point and print a message please remove cd and press a key to continue? That wouldn't make for a particularly unattended installation (although I will agree that neither does having the machine boot the CD over and over...). You can, however, use cdeject to pop the disc out (I don't think it's on the CD, but Patrick's a nice bloke about cramming more crap on the image) or, even cuter, use one of the tools to fiddle the BIOS boot order so the CD-ROM drive is no longer the first boot device. It would also be useful to do a Windows-CD feature theft and do the press any key to boot from CD thing. - Matt -- For once, Microsoft wasn't exaggerating when they named it the 'Jet Engine' -- your data's the seagull. -- Chris Adams signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Unattended] Machine Dependent Productkeys
On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 04:59:37PM +0200, Tft Tco wrote: I want to have an unattended install with retail products where each of them needs / should have a separate product key. does anybody know how I can get an individual product key that is based on the machine name? Yup, although I key off MAC address instead. You can use a CSV file containing all of your name = key mappings, then you need to write (or otherwise obtain) code that looks through the CSV file for a line containing the current machine's name, and then return the product key. Alternately, install dbd-mysql and query a database (if that's where the info is). I found a hint at the end of unattended.sourceforge.net/apps.html - but unfortunatly I found no example anywhere that would clarify how officexp-key.pl is working. Especially as I don't know how to know on what machine I am. Presumably gethostname() will work on Windows as it does on Unix. Might need to strip the domain portion, but string-fiddling is what Perl does best. - Matt -- For once, Microsoft wasn't exaggerating when they named it the 'Jet Engine' -- your data's the seagull. -- Chris Adams signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Unattended] possible bug in linux bootdisk, master script?
On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:23:40PM +0200, Tft Tco wrote:
I just tried the linux bootdisk with unattended 4.4b.
it worked until the script wanted to mount the install share. that was the
point when it said:
*** Trying smbmount \\myserver.local\install /z -o
ttl=60,username=geust,ro
*** smbmount did not work
so i was checking the script, it actually does the following command:
smbmount \\myserver.local\install /z -o ttl=60,username=geust,ro
if I type that in - either in linuxboot disk bash or on any other available
linux here, I get the info page from smbmount (wrong parameters)
when I change the double quotes () into single quotes (') however, the
whole thing seems to work - at least when I run the command by hand. I
didn't try to make my own bootdisk yet.
smbmount '\\myserver.local\install' /z -o ttl=60,username=geust,ro
I would suggest that the backslashes are being interpreted by your shell,
which means that by the time smbmount sees them, it looks like this:
smbmount \myserver.localnstall /z -o ttl=60,username=geust,ro
(modulo any shell expansion of \i, which will almost certainly not produce
\i...)
This is supported by the fact that single quotes makes everything OK,
because single-quotes are usually interpreted as leave whatever is in here
right the hell alone, shell -- are you listening to me shell? Dammit,
listen! smack and so on.
Switching backslashes for forwardslashes would work, as would doubling the
slashes, or switching double-quotes for single-quotes.
I could have sworn that the install script did one of these all by itself.
Certainly I haven't come up against the problem.
- Matt
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Re: [Unattended] Updating Machines Built w/ Unattended...
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 04:00:58PM -0500, Michael Kahle wrote: What if, instead of querying a few text files under NETINST on the built machine for software to install and settings, we instead wrote this information, as well as extra information about packages already installed into the Windows Registry... say HKEY Local MachineSOFTWAREUnattended. We could then use this information to query a machine's current software/versions installed and update this with a hook in the login script...??? Thoughts? I've got Makefiles and an IRM database doing that sort of thing for me in my partial deployment. IRM keeps a track of what software is installed on each machine, and I've got a perl script 'up2date.pl' which runs on the machine to query the DB and run a makefile for each installed software package. The makefile can be as simple or as complex as need be to ensure that the software is always installed the same on each machine, and that all the necessary updates are installed once and only once. I use a lot of stamp files to ensure that sort of thing, and I haven't got error rollbacks happeening yet, but it certainly runs pretty well so far (except for shitheap software like Outlook and Office which won't cleanly auto-install for me). Using the registry for anything kind of scares me, because it's such a festering heap of dung, but it could be useful instead of stamp files for monitoring the installation state (checkpoints?) of all the installed software packages. - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now, one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] Message Pervious Operating system on c:
On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 02:47:28PM +1000, jed wrote: Blank hard disk drive starting an unattended install why does it end up with Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Pervious Operating system on c: i have to manualy editing the boot.ini to get rid of it. Should unattended no do this or get rid of it for me. How do i stop it? Run the bootini batch file after installation. There are comments on the unattended site (http://unattended.sf.net) about it. I've noticed a lot of your questions are fairly well answered on the site. I suggest you read it thoroughly. - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g. Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149alloc_id=8166op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] get rid of the first questions
On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 07:47:04PM +0200, Vincent Malguy wrote: I am using the dos bootdisk. I have a question, how to get rid of the first 2 questions before the file download ? The first question is not so much a problem because it has a timeout but the second must be answered and if i have to answer one question , this is not a zero question install . What's the second question? I don't have any non-timeout'd questions on my install... - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g. Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149alloc_id=8166op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] Problem using Linux boot disk 4.2
On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 12:10:04PM -0400, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: At least this should teach me not to make changes between -rc* and final in the future... It's a lesson we all have to learn, unfortunately. My lesson would make you wince like you'd been kicked in the nuts -- might make you feel better about this one. grin - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g. Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149alloc_id=8166op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] Server Space
On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 05:53:26PM +1000, Mangano, Aron wrote: 1. Is it possible that we can set up server space somewhere for users to contribute files such as scripts they have written, etc etc. I'm sure I'm not the only person who could do this, but I'm willing to offer up some HDD space / URL space / bandwidth for doing something like this. Whether I can spend the time writing a management interface is something else, but I can certainly supply hosting. What exactly did you have in mind? - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: SourceForge.net Broadband Sign-up now for SourceForge Broadband and get the fastest 6.0/768 connection for only $19.95/mo for the first 3 months! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=2562alloc_id=6184op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] problems with unatteded-info?
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 12:24:13PM +0300, Anders Nystr?m wrote: 1, I can not get any new updates on the unattended-info page? Can you rephrase that as an actual question? 2, When can we change the default server, user and password for the linuxboot It is possible to set the UNC name of the server share, and the username and password to use to mount it, in DHCP option 233. The structure is basically to set the option to z_path=\\server\install z_user=username z_pass=password. The linuxboot client will automagically pick up the appropriate options from there, and will mount the share appropriately all by itself. Searching the list archives (both unattended-info and unattended-devel) for DHCP will probably solve the problem. - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Sleepycat Software Learn developer strategies Cisco, Motorola, Ericsson Lucent use to deliver higher performing products faster, at low TCO. http://www.sleepycat.com/telcomwpreg.php?From=osdnemail3 ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
Re: [Unattended] Perl DBI woes
On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 09:22:19AM -0400, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: Of all the third-party modules we might consider shipping by default, DBI is clearly #1 on the list. I will look into adding it in the next release as well. How soon do you need this? I've hacked around it for now by storing the values I need in a CSV[1], and there's no way in hell this is going live any time in at least the next two to three weeks (I haven't got the application installation side of things sorted, and I'm going on my honeymoon next week, so that's at least 1.5 weeks out of the way), so there's no great screaming need. If I may make a request for the DBD modules, please support at least DBD-pg and DBD-mysql. DBD-sqlite would also be cool. - Matt [1] That isn't a particularly pleasant method for my needs, since it requires periodic manual export (can't do it automatically because the IRM web DB runs off a different machine to the unattended server). -- All I care about [a linux distro] is it detect my hardware (non-Debian strengths), and teach me to fish instead of just giving me a smelly old fish (most people 'xcept Debian), and I guess don't just give me a fish biology textbook (gentoo). -- Tom (in d-devel) --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
[Unattended] DHCP Z driving
For people who are planning on using this, a word of warning: if you have your z: share set up for guest access, make sure you set your z_pass to empty. By default, the system tries to use 'guest' as the password, which will hopefully fail on everyone's systems. g Set an empty z_pass like this: option option-233 z_path=//server/installer z_pass= Hopefully it'll save someone a few minutes of wailing and gnashing of teeth. - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
[Unattended] Bad quotes! Naughty quotes!
For Patrick and anyone who's hit this: I think that the credentials placed in c:\netinst\tempcred.bat shouldn't be quoted. It causes (Win2K at least) to think that the previously empty string is, in fact, a pair of double quotes (). It annoys the crap out of net use, because you set your Z_USER to , and then mapznrun thinks hmm, I'll assume that it's an empty user we want, rather than a guest account, so we end up specifying /user: to net use, which proceeds to shit itself. I don't know if not having quotes in tempcred will annoy the batch files when there's a user specified, but an empty user results in all sorts of problems. - Matt --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470alloc_id=3638op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
RE: [Unattended] Some ideas from the new guy
Package Management *** I was reading through the mail list archives and saw that package management is something that is needed/wanted. I agree wholeheartedly. [...] good fit. Having a central registry of all these packages that we can sync to would be ideal. Letting maintainers update these packages would be even better. Has anyone put specific thought into this? If so, what was it? And, what would be the next steps? If we all need it and it is just going to need someone to write it I would like to volunteer. My expertise is in web programming anyway, that seems a logical way to do it. I have a ton of bandwidth at work (I am on a university campus) and could have a test server up nice a quick. If no one else has really looked into this I can start to formalize my thoughts and present a design recommendation to the list. If you're thinking of a Package being something like Patch Q123456, or Adobe Reader 6.0, then you're going to come against problems with redistribution, because unlike Gentoo's portage tree, most of the packages you'll make for Windows don't allow free redistribution of the program, so the best you can do is to provide the installer files for the package, and have the user drop the package files into the portage tree on their local systems. For all that, I think that it's a ripper of an idea to do this, as the biggest problem I've got is making all the shitty little apps in use here install automatically, and I'd *love* it if I could contribute the ones I've done in exchange for the ones that other people have done. Maybe little zip files full of batch scripts and such to install various applications, which people download, stick in their own ports tree, and then follow the simple instructions on how to get the program files themselves in there from the CD or original website or whatever. Post Install Usage *** Or, Client Package Management. The other side of the coin is that if our servers are updated with the latest packages how do we keep the client machines going. I know that this is a little out of the scope of an Unattended install project, but like I mentioned above ... Keeping client machines up to date is something I'm wanting to work on (when I find the time). I've played around a bit with using Makefiles for each of the software packages I use, which create stamp files on the client to tell it what the state of the machine is. After (for instance) adding a new version of the software to the Unattended tree, including updating the package's makefile for the new version, a rerun of the master Makefile (customised for the machine's software load, or using database info (see below)) will see the new version in the package makefile and run the appropriate commands to make the update. There's probably a better way (less fragile), but It Seems To Work For Me. * Administrative interface: Here is an example -- I know I am having a new user start, they are going to get the base install, the sales install, and a couple of other apps too. I log in to the web interface of my Unattended server, select the machine from my inventory, select the os, select base, sales, then select the other applications from my catalog of installs. This Aaah, a man after my own heart. See below. * License counts: Now I am just wishing aren't I? If I have a fixed amount of licenses for a specific application I can decrement that number when it is selected from the interface (or maybe when it is installed), unless the user is already licensed for it...etc etc You may or may not be aware of the existence of a nice little webapp called IRM. It can do machine, user, licence, networking tracking, (and soon peripherals). My dream (called that because I want to do it but have no clear plan on when or how) is to integrate Unattended and IRM, as follows: * Machines are set up in IRM, and are obviously tagged by MAC address and hostname, which the DHCP server uses to assign addresses and whatnot. * Unattended also gets this information out of the IRM database (I'm also thinking of converting a lot of IRM's database backend to LDAP, because LDAP is more suited to the task), so it knows what the machine's hostname and such are. Other random settings can probably be set in the unattend.txt file. * IRM stores information on software installations (including, soon, licence numbers assigned to individual machines), and could have information on where in the Unattended tree the individual software packages are (and the installation script to use). Unattended could use this information to install the software packages assigned to each machine. If so, what kinds of technologies would you like to see used? IRM is true LAMP. I'm starting to use PgSQL for some of my projects, as the whole relationships thing (as well as triggers and stored procs) is starting to become necessary for my work, but MySQL works nicely for most
Re: [Unattended] Internet Explorer plugins
I'd like to be able to install some plug-ins required by some sites. One in particular is installed only after logging onto the site. How can I retrieve the installation file and install it on other computers without having to log into the site, preferably by a mechanism that doesn't need any user interaction? As I understand it, plugins are specified by an object tag in the HTML of the page. That then specifies where to get the plugin from, and IE then does the install itself. The first step is to get the plugin (go to the page of interest and look for those tags; the URL to download the code from should be in there. Once you've accomplished that, installation should (I imagine) be fairly straightforward if you're used to the average windows installation methods. - Matt --- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356alloc_id=3438op=click ___ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
