Re: [Ani-users] Some general Questions

[Till W. <t.w...@su...>]

Hi Martin

Martin Schulte wrote:
> Hello,
> i want to setup up an network with double boot - windowsXP and Linux - . 
> I want to install windows with ANI, and after that i make a pxe boot 
> with a custom debian netboot.img. It will fetch automatically the 
> biggest free space on disk to install.
>
> So my question:
> 1. Does ANI create or can ANI create an partitions small than the full 
> disksize of the target PC?
>   
Yes, but not "out of the box".

There's an option ExtendOemPartition=1 in unattended.tpl. If you set 
this to 0, then the system partition keeps is initial size after 
installation.
The initial size is itself (2 Gbytes) is hardcoded in Ani.pm lines 349, 
366 
(http://ani.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ani/W2K/sources/AniInst/files_manix.bz2/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/Ani.pm) 
which is part of manix.bz2.

If you want to change this, you have to rebuild, which requires a lot of 
knowledge.
> 2. Is it possible to boot the ANI floppy disk via PXE? I've some Clients 
> without floppy disk and CDrom
>   
Yes. Read the file readme.txt in the TFTPROOT directory.
> 3. Is there something like multicasting  possible?
>   
Could you please elaborate?
> 4. Is it possible to make the installation fully automated? If i 
> understand right, ani will create an hidden partition on the target pc, 
> with a file contains the the answers from the first installation? And, 
> if i run ANI again, it runs fully automatic --> in 'update' and in 'new' 
> mode?
>   
It runs fully unattended for the first time, too. Check it out.

> 5. Is there an possibility to install software (e. g. using AutoIT 
> scripts or sth. else) I cant find sth. like this in the section 
> 'Configure Post-Windows Installation',
>   
The ability to install software was one of the main goals of ANI - 
please read CONTENT.txt and swpack.ini in the APACK directory.
Please see here: 
http://ani.sourceforge.net/configuration.php?lang=en#softwareInstallation.

> 6. Can i use an windows XP Image created by 'nlite' or 'Windows 
> Unattended CD Creator' to install with any?
>   
This is not supported which means: We never had a reason to try this.

Till Wimmer



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