[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
- as others in the mailing list have mentioned, there is no RTL8139 driver included yet. It would be nice if the next upgrade could include it as an option.
Added. [..]
That's great, thanks.
Is there an easy way to customize the bood CD's boot scripts? I know that you're providing it as an ISO image, because otherwise, it won't be bootable, but it would be very nice if there was a way to add scripts to its boot process (because booting off CD is much faster, and also, it includes multiple network drivers at once).
Also, I've heard there is a different project that created a boot disk with tons of different drivers at once, using PCI auto-detection. Now that would be nice to have.
That would be "Bart's boot disk".
Right, that's what I was referring to.
I agree this would be nice, although I wonder how many drivers can actually fit on a single floppy.
Actually I wonder if it is possible to - when using the boot CD instead of the boot disk - have the drivers on the CD and pointing to them from the emulated (through the .img file) boot disk?
- both when first booting and when rebooting after the partitioning, the disk asks whether the SMB login data (per default "GUEST", no password, don't save password list) is correct. I've edited this data to use a special account called "UNATTENDED" per default, somewhere in the system.ini (or protocol.ini?). The batch file is still asking though. Is there a way to set the ini files so that it won't ask and just go ahead and try connecting?
I know of no way, except to use net.exe itself to save your password in a "password list". And even then it might prompt for the user name; I am not sure.
Maybe you could put your answers in a text file and redirect stdin from there? As in:
net start basic < stuff.txt
...where stuff.txt is just three lines with a user name, password, and carriage return?
I'll try.
- After the partitioning, I've found it asks whether it should really format the disk. I always thought format.exe had a /y option for no longer asking, but I guess I was wrong (I tried with the format.exe supplied with unattended as well as with Windows 2000's version; neither had that option). Is there another way, using the Perl script, to tell it to go ahead?
Again, redirecting stdin from a file might work. Then again, maybe not.
I am a little surprised that format.exe does not let you bypass its question. Maybe you could take this up with the FreeDOS folks?
Hmm. Actually, according to <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=4054810> Herbert's post, format.exe 0.85 already contains this fix, and 0.85 is the version you're distributing. It looks like /y is a hidden option, as /? does not mention it. I'll try it.
- The third step, as I recall, where it stops is with the serial number. Even though I have provided a valid serial number in my ./site/unattended.txt file, it asks both during the perl script execution and during Windows 2000 Setup. I've used the format as it is printed; maybe I must leave out the dashes? Or maybe, as seen in your example
ProductKey=XXXXX-YYYYY-ZZZZZ-00000-11111
Yeah, unfortunately, my code here is broken. For Windows 2000, you want to set "ProductID", not "ProductKey"... For now, the easiest workaround is just to set BOTH ProductID and ProductKey to the same value (the license key).
Ah, okay. That's no problem then.
- Next up is a problem most likely difficult to solve (if possible at all): with the next reboot, the BIOS will recognize the disk again, and the disk will start its batch script again, even thought Windows 2000 Setup should continue.
To my knowledge, fixing this is impossible. The best you could do, I think, would be to use a network boot, and somehow frob the state on the DHCP (or TFTP) *server* to achieve a different effect on each boot. This is possible in principle, but tricky to do securely and reliably.
I'd really like to do network booting, but I guess I won't have fun running around the house, adding boot chips to the NICs. I might as well do that sooner or later though, simple because it makes it much easier to maintain (for example, having the Domain Controller boot all its clients at Sundays doing regular stuff like defragmentation and installing patches).
- Oh, and while we're at boot.ini, I've noticed with this kind of running Windows 2000 Setup, there is a "Previous Windows installation" item in the boot menu. Shouldn't the script take care of that?
See the install/bin/bootini.pl script. Arrange to run it in the post-installation script (as the provided base.bat script does) and you should be all set.
I'll check, thanks.
Once again, thanks for your efforts, and thanks in advance for a reply!
You are very welcome. I should have a little time this weekend to get the next release out the door. Enough bug fixes have accumulated to make it worthwhile, I think.
Nice :-)
-- S�ren 'Chucker' Kuklau
