[Unattended] Thank you unattended but I've had to move on to a new system...

[Craig S. <csi...@ca...>]

Hello People,

First off - thank you all for your hard work on creating unattended.  We
have used it in our animation department for the last three years and it
has been great.

Unfortunately I've had to move on because of the boot disk issue.  Not
being a linux expert, I've tried many of the boot disks posted and even
tried unsuccessfully to make my own.  I just keep getting errors.  So I
had to find a solution that worked and upon some advice from threads
here and from trolling msfn.org I have come up with the following
solution.  I'm posting it in case anyone here is like me a lurker who is
looking for answers.

The Background:
We needed a system that is easy to manage and update, doesn't require an
additional server (beyond DHCP) and could use the scripts we've already
developed to deploy software.  We are only running XP at this time.  So
consider this a very narrow solution unlike unattended :)  Security
isn't an issue during deployment for us since the labs/machines are
installed when no-one is around.

The Solution:
We made a slipstremed universal XP boot disk using nlite
(www.nliteos.com), RyanVM Updates (www.ryanvm.net) and Driverspacks.net.
 This gives us a slipstreamed boot cd that so far works on all of our
machines (5 year old dells to three month old custom built pc's).  
The RyanVm updates slipstream many of the Microsoft Hotfixes and Crtical
updates and a few others applications.  We are slipstreaming WGA, Direct
X9, WMP 11 and IE 7.

When the bootdisk starts up we need to manually partition the drives. 
The bootdisk configures networking, some reg tweaks and sets the
computer name to a random name.  It also sets the administrator account
to autologin.  Winsit.inf runs a batch file from guirunonce that copies
a modified mapznrun.bat to the administrator's startup folder.

Upon Administrative Login, a modified mapznrun.bat runs (from the
administrator startup folder for simplicity).
The mapznrun.bat maps drive z: to \\server\install.  Then runs
z:\scripts\install.bat.  That way the universal boot disk will install a
slipstreamed windows xp silently and then run whatever we want from the
server.

The servers install.bat then takes over and installs the application
software and system setup.

The install.bat script doesn't use a stack approach like todo.txt but
instead checks to see if apps and configurations have already been
installed.  This is done using 'if exist' statements in the batch files
combined with writing .txt files to the c:\netinst folder for things
that we couldn't easily test in batch files.

Since this is not the complete picture, I've posted details on my
website at http://www.cgfiles.com/tutorials/unattended/index.html

Let me know if you have any questions or want more info.  Next year if
we're running vista I'll probably look for another solution again. 
(Seems to be a yearly occurance).

Cheers,

Craig




_________________________
Craig Simmons
Animation Coordinator
Capilano College
www.gradshow.com
csi...@ca...
604-990-7854