[Pc_Support] I give up, how do you image Windows 2K?

[Jason Boxman]

On Thursday 04 May 2006 12:23, Damien McKenna wrote:
<snip>
> You know, I just thought of how this could be done.  You still have the
> same setup - FTP login, etc.  Once the client logs in it would pull down
> a file called e.g. "deployment.txt".  This file would be a simple list
> of MACs corresponding to an image, e.g.:
>
> 001122334455:/winxp_customersupport/20060501.g4u
> 001122334466:/winxp_customersupport/20060501.g4u
> 001122334477:/winxp_customersupport/20060501.g4u
>
> Then to make life even easier, you have a database application on the
> FTP server that a) keeps a running list of the local PCs based on the
> MAC which would be compiled into groups, b) a list of all images
> available, c) allows you to link A to B to schedule deployment and save
> it as a "deployment.txt" file.  This management application would be
> easy to do, enhancing G4U to support automation would be the trickier
> part.

No kidding.  Just getting PXE booting working makes my brain hurt.  I think 
I'm going to die.

So far, I've had to (re)configure DHCP, including a nasty and unavoidable 
stanza that identifies the target machine by MAC address, forcing manual 
editing, the tftpd-hpa tftp server, NFS v3, and eventually an FTPd, probably 
vsftpd.  Sigh.

I also had to wade through about two dozen threads and pages from searching 
Google to even determine how exactly you PXE boot NetBSD, as the docs for g4u 
send you off to NetBSD land to find pxeboot_ia32.bin yourself.  It's actually 
hidden on a NetBSD mirror, somewhere, though probably obvious if you are a 
NetBSD admin.  You have to extract it from a tarball of what appears to be 
the base system.

So I'm now running DHCP, TFTPd, FTPd, and NFS.  Fortunately I was already 
running and have configured everything except TFTPd, but still...  Wow.

I wish there was someway for NetBSD's PXE bootloader to retain IP information 
so I didn't have to hardcode a section for each system with an IP and MAC 
address so 'root-path' and 'next-server' are picked up when the bootloader 
re-DHCPs.  (You end up with two DHCP requests, one from the PXE PROM and one 
from the PXE bootloader itself, which bootstraps over NFS once it gets what 
it needs...)

omg yes!

I think configuring SASL, Exim4, and TLS was more fun...

-- 

Jason Boxman
http://edseek.com/ - Linux and FOSS stuff