I think an interesting fourth alternative would mix the first and third approach. That would be to have the Linux Disk prepare the drive, access the network, and then copy the files to where they need to go in order to skip the first step of the Microsoft setup process, reverse engineering the work done by winnt.exe and winnt32.exe.
If you look at the drive after completing the first step in the normal fashion, you'll find the following structure: c:\$WIN_NT$.~LS c:\$WIN_NT$.~BT c:\Folder Settings c:\$LDR$ c:\ntdetect.com c:\ntldr c:\txtsetup.sif c:\BOOT.INI Most of these files come right out of the i386 folder, but i'm not sure if they are extracted as they are copied. I have to take another look. All the files with an underscore at the end are actually compressed with Microsoft's integrated compression tool (LZIP if I remember right.) The txtsetup.sif is another name for the unattend.txt file. The BOOT.INI points to a BOOTSECT.DAT file inside the $WIN_NT$.~BT folder. If the files are copied correctly and the boot sector is set, I think the machine would be tricked into continuing with the second phase of installation. Advantages: It may be easier to setup than using wine and faster to install than running the first step of the installation twice. Disadvantages: The folder structure may not mirror the i386 directory exactly, making the linux extracting portion difficult to script. The structure may also be different for server and professional, xp and 2000. Lastly, Microsoft products have an eerie way of knowing when things aren't done their way, hidden file permissions, file size checks, and other safeguards may be present. --Pablo On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 14:18, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: > It sounds like people are fond of the Linux idea. Here are my > musings. > > There are three basic approaches we can use. For any of these, we > would start by booting a diskless Linux system and using it to > partition and format the hard drive, including a FAT (or FAT32) > partition as required. We would use Perl code similar to what we have > now to generate the unattend.txt file. > > > Approach 1: Copy the installation tree (e.g., winxp/i386) to the > master partition, configure it to boot to DOS, and create a trivial > autoexec.bat to launch winnt.exe. > > The advantage of this approach is its simplicity. We would just be > using Linux to create unattend.txt and to copy the installation tree > to the hard drive. From there, it would work a lot like the current > system, but with the installation tree on the hard drive instead of on > the network, and with the unattend.txt file already present; so the > DOS portion would need no networking and no Perl. > > We would still need to use an original FAT or FAT32 partition, because > winnt.exe would still be running from DOS. > > Now for the disadvantages. First, the installation tree would take up > space on the drive, although we could remove it once the installation > finished. Second, every file would ultimately be copied three times: > Once from Linux onto the hard drive, once by winnt.exe, and once by > the real OS installation. (Contrast this to the present system, which > only has winnt.exe and the real OS installation pushing data around.) > > Incidentally, someone wrote me off-list to describe an approach like > this which he is already using at his site. So this would definitely > > Approach 3: Use Wine to run "winnt32.exe /syspart" under Linux. > > I have no idea whether this would work. The docs for winnt32.exe is > say it runs under Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP, so it might be > possible to make it work under Wine. > > The disadvantage is that this will take some effort, most likely > including some patches to Wine itself. > > But on the bright side, this would avoid DOS completely, it would > require no FAT partitions, and most of all, it would be way, way cool. > OK, back to my day job. > > Thoughts? > > - Pat ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by:Crypto Challenge is now open! Get cracking and register here for some mind boggling fun and the chance of winning an Apple iPod: http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?thaw0031en _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
