hello everyone .. i use a diskless debian linux to do the unattended installations here. setting up such a system is not complicated but you will need a few daemons to be installed on your server(s).
how it works ------------ linux is booted via etherboot [http://www.etherboot.org/] and runs completely off the network. after system bootup a cron job is started every minute to get the current machine ready to install windows xp. i use a cron job because the script checks if it is allowed to install etc. if the script is permitted to install, it will do the following things: - partition the hardisk [parted http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/parted.html] - creating fat32 fileystems [parted] - make the machine bootable (using w98/command.com)[ms-sys http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ms-sys.html] - copy the files - customize unattend.txt after that the machine is rebootet, starts the w98/command.com and starts the windows xp setup. tech ---- on a server the following daemons are needed: - dhcpd for the ip addresses - tftpd for booting via network (fetching the kernel) - nfsd provides the client with nfs-root-fs etc. - mysqld stores informations about the clients (mac-address, is the machine to be installed ..), about the software(which installscript is used for software xyz, which software is part of the group 'base installation' ). the kernel for the clients is fetched via tftp then the root-fileystem is mounted via nfs. instead of being limited to a 1.44m floppy this diskless linux is a full blown linux with all the nice tools (like a sshd server running on it). currently the installation is 190M + 2M per diskless client (so for a whole subnet one would need ~700M). maybe i'm allowed to release this project in the near future. wolfgang -- Wolfgang Borst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> GPG/PGP key 4107B17B
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