[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I would like to know if it's possible to use OpenBSD as RIS-Server to install WIndows via Network. I played around with this for 2 weeks now but I can't figure out how it gets done. Something is missing (maybe a dhcp-option?! :( )
Are you able to boot to your PXE server? That's the first step. Make sure your PXE server can get DHCP requests, even if it's not the DHCP server. If nothing else, you should (in theory) be able to copy over the REMOTEINSTALL tree from your RIS server and share it via tftp and Samba and make something work.
Also I face problems to provide VistaPE (it wont realy boot, bootloader comes up but then the bcd seams to be corrupted in soem way).
Vista is a different animal to install. I haven't worked on remote installing Vista (I'm working with Server 2008, relatively the same) booting from a Server 2003 SP2 with MS RIS/WDS hybrid-mode installed. RIS installing 2000/XP formats the disk and copies files over from the file system and starts setup. WDS installing Vista/2008 formats the disk and unpacks the WIM file onto the disk and starts setup. You won't be able to just copy the Vista DVD to your server and do a remote install, you'll need to download the BDD2007 and/or WAIK kit to make network-installable WIM files.
My biggest hurdles moving from RIS to WDS were adding network drivers to the boot image for DL360 G5 servers (the normal drivers won't work) and moving my skill set from winnt.sif (2003) to unattend.xml (2008).
So if somebody here also administrates Widnows-Servers (I don't know that much about 'em :/) and knows how to emulate a RIS please tell me. I would love to replace the Windows Box (the Imaging-Server was already replaced).
The "unattended" project mentioned earlier looks good, I haven't used it. I don't know if it'll do Vista installs, if that's a requirement. I guess my question is, if you have a working RIS solution, why not continue using it? You seem to already be a Windows shop on the desktops, it doesn't seem like having a Windows server around would be that terrible.
