research paper: Copyright (c) 2011 Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" I have analyzed VMware Workstation 7 product: It has 3 backends: Red Hat Anaconda kickstart, Windows NT 5.x and Windows NT 6.x scripts.
The scripts for each backend is generated on the fly, based on template. -------------------------------------- Windows unattended scripts: Windows NT 5.x unattended scripts: (family includes Windows 2000/XP/2003) is just single file 'winnt.sif' on floppy, that has INI-like syntax. Windows NT 6.x unattended scripts: (family includes Windows Vista/7/2008) is just single file 'autounattend.xml' on floppy, that has XML-like syntax. Docs about both formats can be found on Google. For VBox deployment, I recommend to use 2 CDs + floppy. (1st CD = Windows, 2nd CD = Guest Additions.iso, floppy = has the config file) We'll boot from the Windows CD. We must: 1. generate the Windows-unattended scripts (winnt.sif and autounattend.xml), 2. create a FAT12-formatted 1.44 MB standard empty floppy image. 3. copy the Windows-unattended scripts into the floppy image. Problems: stage 2 and stage 3 are impossible on Windows hosts without C coding. (on Linux I use 'dd' and 'mkfs.msdos' for stage 2; 'mtools' for stage 3) -------------------------------------- Red Hat Anaconda kickstart: (family includes RHEL3/4/5, CentOS, Scientific Linux and Oracle Enterprise Linux, that claims to be 'Unbreakble') :) (a bit harder to support, but also possible is: Fedora) Those are much more complex. Anaconda does not read kickstart config files from floppy, unlike Windows. The end result, is that there is a need to generate cusom-made bootable ISO, that includes linux kernel, initrd, and kickstart config file. In addition, I also recommend putting VBoxLinuxAdditions.run on the 2nd CD, so they could be automatically deployed. For VBox deployment, I recommend to use 2 CDs. (1st CD = Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 2nd CD = custom-made.iso) We must: 1. generate Linux-kickstart scripts 2. extract Linux-kernel, initrd, bootloader from original Red-Hat-like DVD. 3. extract VBoxLinuxAdditions.run from GuestAdditions.iso. 4. generate bootable custom-made iso (ISO9660 filesystem), that uses components from steps #1, #2, #3. Problems: stages 2 and 3 are impossible on Windows hosts without C coding. (on Linux I use 'mount -o loop' for stage 2+3; 'genisoimage' and 'mkisofs' are available for Windows stage 4) (VMware WS 7 uses 'mkisofs' on Windows hosts) ======================================= I will update the research paper here: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=26005&p=211083#p211083 -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list [email protected] https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
