Hi list members, my adventure regarding unattended installation of Windows Server 2008 from a Linux environment have finally led to success :) I have created my own php-gui to install several Linux distro's, 2003 server and WinXP. All completely unattended and with status updates on key moments in the installation progress. And finally, i can now add 2k8 to this list (and vista/win7 aswell, they are based on WinPE2/3). Furthermore, it is not related to unattended-project as it does not take any advantage of the powerfull perl stuff. At this point i can store my unattended.xml in a database and have it beeing parsed and applied to setup.exe. Besides, unattended is aimed at using Linux/WinPE while this is not possible with WinPE3 (afaik). Besides the minor 'problem' its even quicker/easier :) (roughly 20mins to install 2k8-Standard in ESXi)
The 'problem': a windows machine is required for the preparing steps, though this has been automated with a batch file. Luckily, the preparation steps in windows can be re-used on several hardware configurations and so they can be delivered as-is. The two steps: * create a BCD to replace boot.ini: only needed once to point to using a ram-drive * edit .wim file: you could call this the initrd, it holds a basic shell and contains all drivers needed in setup. (Additional drivers can be specified in unattended.xml but i haven't looked into this yet). It apears i can extract files from this using windows 7zip though it doesn't allow me to create a new .wim archive :( We need to extract files needed for PXE boot and we need to replace 1 file to extend the bootup (make it mount a network share and run a certain script from there to prepare and run setup.exe with unattended.xml). So, the only hardcoded thing is the location of where to mount the z:, the samba share containing the root of the 2k8 dvd (rsync -avz /media/ /mirror/2k8/) and our installation scripts. My question is: is it possible to read linux like 'append' parameters from the PXE boot in the WinPE environment? Perhaps using/creating a simple program for this? With that, both files can be delivered as-is and settings can be applied dynamically. (configure settings like hostname and network in php-gui) The boot process: * PXE boot WinPE2/3 kernel * kernel mounts the .wim file, executes batch file * batch file mounts network share with startup script * run startup script, this install wget (gnuwin32) and fetches unattended.xml * fire up setup.exe with the unattended switch * setup is running * execute post-install stuff as described in unattended.xml * post-install from unattended mounts the network share and executes other script * that will install wget, fetch the post-install batch and execute it * connect to it using rdesktop when its done unattended, from start to finish :) regards, - Harm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ unattended-devel mailing list unattended-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-devel
