Making multi-nic ghost bootable cd's?

[mickrick]

Can anyone suggest a method for creating multi-nic ghost bootable cd's? I can create single-nic bootable cd's but my experience of dos is very limited. I know it can be done, a colleague made one up and now it needs updated but he cannot remember how he did it (I know, he should have taken notes) and a search of the net has turned up nothing.

Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in!

 

[riser]

Create a boot diskette.

Then, create a bootable CD using the bootdisk and the software (should have create bootable CD) - the software will do the work.

But in your autoexec.bat on your bootdisk, add a line in there at the end to call "ghost.exe imagename /parameters"

You can also create a boot disk and modify the autoexec.bat and config.sys to make a nice boot menu. I don't have my example at work - it's a home.

Send me an email and I'll see about emailing you my boot configs. Email is in my profile, click on my name to the left.



OR are you looking to pull an image from a ghost server? If that's the case, you have bigger issues. You'll need to extract the NIC drivers on the CD and have them load..

either way.. using a bootable ghost CD and pulling the image from a ghost server, or booting to a CD and pulling the image off the CD.. you can find your answers by doing a quick Google search. Plenty of info on it.

 

[folken]

My co worker just made the exact thing you are after. I'll see if I can get him to write up a little how to for it. The cd boots to a menu of which nic you want.
We are using Ghost 8.0, the anoying 2 floppy version lol.

Now if only windows would go to the cdrom for sysprep...

<A HREF="http/www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[riser]

You have to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat to get the menu. I forgot to get my one from home and post it.

My biggest thing is finding cd-rom drivers.. I always get stuck with some cheap off-brand cd-rom that no drives ever work for..

Windows to the cdrom for sysprep? Don't you use sysprep'd images to do that?

I used to create my image, sysprep it, pull the HD and create an image out of it.. that when whenever a new PC with that image would boot up, it'd go right into sysprep.

 

[folken]

I mean have windows read the cd for an answer file. Using a separate floppy just for that isn't to bad but having it all on the cd would be nice

We used the cdrom drivers from those 95b boot floppys on bootdisk.com. Havent found a drive they dont work in yet.

<A HREF="http/www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[riser]

Hmm.. I would normally run the sysprep setup, configure it how I wanted it.. using VLK I didn't need to clear out the license key.

Copy it down, run sysprep -pnp, it shuts down. Image it.. put the image on.. it boots up, all I needed to do was give the PC a name and it was done... nothing else.

If you run sysprep from the C: drive, it preps it and deletes the sysprep folder from the C: drive once it's done. The answer file exists in the sysprep folder that gets copied to the C:\.

What info do you have in your answer file?

 

[folken]

You definatly learn something new every day. We are now mostly using xp pro at my site and all we have been doing is a reseal with mini-setup. Our answerfile looks like this:
;SetupMgrTag
[Unattended]
OemSkipEula=Yes
InstallFilesPath=C:\sysprep\i386
TargetPath=\WINDOWS

[GuiUnattended]
AdminPassword="(localpass)"
EncryptedAdminPassword=NO
OEMSkipRegional=1
TimeZone=4
OemSkipWelcome=1

[UserData]
ProductKey=(our vlk licence)
FullName="user"
OrgName="(org)"

[TapiLocation]
CountryCode=1
AreaCode=(area code)

[Identification]
JoinDomain=(sitedomain)
DomainAdmin=(admin account made for ghosting)
DomainAdminPassword=(that accounts pass)

[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents=No

[Branding]
BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes

[Proxy]
Proxy_Enable=0
Use_Same_Proxy=0

[NetClients]
MS_MSClient=params.MS_MSClient

[Display]
BitsPerPel=16
Xresolution=1024
YResolution=768
Vrefresh=60

That is the way I was shown to do it so I didn't mess with it much. Your way sounds WAY better, I'll have to start tinkering. That will make life much easier in the coming days, my 2 fellow techs and I have almost 200 machine replacements to do and maybe 2weeks to do it.

<A HREF="http/www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[riser]

Your answer file looks good..

You can test it easily to see how it works.. take a computer, copy your sysprep folder to C:\sysprep ..

Go into dos, go to C:\sysprep

type: sysprep -pnp

It'll run through it's thing, then shut down the PC. If it runs longer than 5 minutes and it doesn't shut down but sits at a blue screen, just turn the PC off. It's had enough time.. the shutdown thing hasn't always worked properly.

At that point, when you turn the PC on, it'll go into the mini-setup.

So after you sysprep and run with the -pnp switch, pull the HD and create an image of it.. I made a bootable CD with ghost.exe, edited the config.sys and autoexec.bat.

It'd boot up and give you 3 options, load PC with ghost image, load PC with CD-rom support, or go into windows normal.

Here's my Autoexec.bat - I'll have to hunt down the config.sys, which shows the menu.

autoexec.bat

@ECHO OFF
path=a:\;a:\ghost

IF "%config%"=="NOCD" GOTO QUIT
MSCDEX.EXE /D:MTMIDE01 /M:10 /l:q

echo.
IF "%config%"=="LOADIMAGE" goto GHOSTSETUP
GOTO QUIT

:GHOSTSETUP
@echo off
MOUSE.COM
MSCDEX.EXE /D:MTMIDE01 /M:10 /l:F
echo Loading Ghost 7.0...
GHOST.EXE /clone,mode=load,src=F:\xxx.gho,dst=1 /sure /rb
goto QUIT



:NOCDROM
echo.
echo Loading OS....
echo.

:QUIT


well, ok.. here's a link that will show you how to make a menu using Config.sys.. it'll call up the autoexec.bat to make it happen.

<A HREF="http/dos.rsvs.net/DOSPAGE/CONFMENU.HTM" target="_new">config.sys menu</A>


I have all of my bootdisk here at work except my config.sys, if you want it email me and I'll send you the zip file of what I have.

 

[folken]

That looks very similar to my coworkers file. His config sys has the menus made in it as well. The choices in his menu are a whole bunch of different network card drivers to load. We have LOTS of different network cards around and all we do is network ghosting so it is very handy

<A HREF="http/www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[riser]

Network ghosting.. I'm not a big fan of it if you have a variety of things.. it can be a pain.

Have you guys tried RIS yet? It takes a bit to prep an image, but you can push it down and slipstream updates to the image file.

You just need a NIC that boots PXE, no drivers needed. It's a good feature and you just need to change boot order to boot to network first.. but you'd have to do that each time you needed to image a computer and change it when you're done.

I believe you can also put a menu in there before you start the service and have it skip right into loading.

 

[folken]

Network ghosting is about our only option due to the volume and ghetoness of our hardware. The images are usually 3-4gb so a dvd would be optimal but not many machines have a dvd drive. We usually ghost at least 20-50 machines at a time, sometimes as many as 100 in labs.

I havent heard of RIS but it does sound interesting. I was wondering about a way to use the PXE boot to dump images on machines, that sounds like the answer. I'll have to research it a bit.

<A HREF="http/www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[riser]

Remote Installation Services.. it's been coming standard with Windows 2000 Server.. it's not hard to use, but you'll need to read up on it. It might not be any faster to push down an image, but you can slipstream patches/hotfixes/etc into your image..

And I don't think it's hardware dependant.. which might save you some time in the long run.