The original is below incase anyone just gets unattended-devel.
Sebastian Schneider wrote:
> Goal is to control the unattended installation from a web-based
frontend. Maybe at 5pm I decide to rebuild >>
> workstation 1234 at 3am in the morning. All workstations should get
configured to boot PXE first, 2nd HDD.
And
> Maybe a solution would be mounting a webdav fs to the tftp's share
point and let some script do the work
> accessing the database in real-time. Another setting up a perl
'server' listening to UDP 'magic' packets.
And
>I'd really like to contribute to unattended to build up an easy to
use/manage solution, that can be configured >
>using a web interface.
I have most of this working just the web interface.
I was stupid enough to do this, until Pat pointed out dos does not
support sockets.
So now use a straight file share,(added to the autoexec.bat) which even
dos can handle, although now with the work on Linux boot disks I expect
moving back to magic packets will become possible.
For the configuration I have all the custom things in the config.pl
script, I have a site/users.txt file with a list of pc_name=Hardware
address, this is then looked up using the $u->{'_meta'}->{'macaddr'}.
Then the pc_name is used to find a file in \site\users\pc_name (which is
a unatteded.txt file) that contains all the settings needed for that
user.
Again this roundabout way was needed for limitations of dos and filename
lengths, With linux it should be simple to just use the mac address ass
the name of a file for the computer.
So the only thing that still needs doing is that front end, to write the
pxeboot file, the pc_name mac address list, and the custom config
unattended file.
But at the moment with all the work Pat and others on linux boot disks,
it seems like a good time to forget all the dos problems and work only
on the gnu-os problems
With hindsight it is the decision of how and where you store the
information for the user and computer seems to be an important one.
For me I don't really like the idea of ldap, but that is just down to
pure lack of experience, and a fear that you get caught in a MS AD or
OpenLDAP plus organizational structural problems and lack of lack of
flexibility on my part I expect I am turning already, as most of the
settings needed for me are there, just a few things like keyboard
language settings are not.
Then the is the formatting settings for disks etc, which for me are
pretty standard (At the moment) but may not be for others or me at
another time.
So what I start to think is some sort of API is needed between where the
data is stored and the unattended backend, which are just few
unatteded.txt files with different names or in different location.
In effect the basic configuration of the install.pl script works as a
API to the user, what would be nice is to have a few more different ways
of getting that input from ldap, sql, text files etc, well perl has
access to all of those.
I don't know if anyone follows the FAI debian installer, but the are a
few things I would like the and one of those is the idea of class
systems, so you could have definition of a class of computer, a user, a
location and the installer will take the whole and make a system.
Well you could say that ldap is also a class based system and maybe some
of those classes should come from ldap, but some classes should in my
view not be linked too close to the ldap systems, but then again...
In conclusion I think it would be quite simple to do the web front end
to the install.pl file as it stands at the current time, and this could
be a great beginning to expanding the manageablity of the whole
installation system, and save time in the end.
But what I would like is that the rest of the installation is automated
from the back end data based systems, which has all those little things,
like what the computer is named, what is the keyboard, what addional
programs to install etc.
Thanks
Max
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Sebastian Schneider
Sent: Tuesday, 24 February, 2004 10:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Unattended] Unattended & control booting
Maybe just a simple question...
How do I control performing a local boot or a a network one?
Goal is to control the unattended installation from a web-based
frontend. Maybe at 5pm I decide to rebuild workstation 1234 at 3am in
the morning. All workstations should get configured to boot PXE first,
2nd HDD.
The client retrieves the pxelinux bootloader and the host-specific
config file from a TFTP server. The config file makes the client to load
the boot image from the unattended project.
1st boot is to rewrite the partition table with one active 2GB
FAT16 partition. The computer needs to reboot, to make that one
available.
2nd boot is to format the just created logical drive and fire up
the unattended Windows XP installation. Windows will need to reboot a
few times unfortunately.
3rd and following boot processes must be from local drive to
prevent a never ending loop.
At any time, after rebuild has been finalized, the whole progress may be
done again, when said so in web tool.
I mean, there's no way to modify any configs, since there's no write
access to the TFTP or anything else, that could modify boot behavior. So
how do I prevent booting over and over again??
Maybe a solution would be mounting a webdav fs to the tftp's share point
and let some script do the work accessing the database in real-time.
Another setting up a perl 'server' listening to UDP 'magic' packets.
But I mean, it should be kept quite simple, since there are so many
projects involved to perform an full unattended right now, such as
pxelinux/syslinux, tftp-hpa, unattended, djgpp, freedos, and perl. I'm
aware, there's no out-of-the-box now except for RIS...but still it's a
bit complicated.
I'd really like to contribute to unattended to build up an easy to
use/manage solution, that can be configured using a web interface.
Cheers,
Sebastian Schneider
---
ESMT European School of Management and Technology GmbH
Unter den Linden 36
D-10117 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 21231 -0
Fax: +49 (0)30 21231 -9
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: www.esmt.org
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