[Andy.A]

Hey,

is it possible to create a wds image from a debian setup ?

i whould like todo so see if it is possible , any help is more then welcome.

with regards

[dexter.inside]

Andy.A, on Jul 6 2008, 12:03 AM, said:

Hey,

is it possible to create a wds image from a debian setup ?

i whould like todo so see if it is possible , any help is more then welcome.

with regards

If that debian distro can run from FAT32, you could probably capture it to a WIM and add it to the WDS.

[Andy.A]

isn't it only ntfs file system that it supports ?

anyway there's no way that i know that a linux distro can run on a ntfs partition.

but a good idea i must say

[bj-kaiser]

Andy.A, on Jul 5 2008, 11:03 PM, said:

Hey,
is it possible to create a wds image from a debian setup ?
i whould like todo so see if it is possible , any help is more then welcome.

If you are running WDS in "compatibility mode" or whatever its called when you have had RIS installed prior to WDS there are ways to boot PXELINUX and thus almost anything non-windows. Search the web for it, I know I have seen it, but I dont have a bookmark at hand.

And actually for linux installations imaging is quite uncommon. Most of the time you see "unattended" installations(aka." pre-seeding" for Debian). Ubuntu I remember has the oem-mode which is similar to MS sysprep. But you'd still have to find a way to get that image into WDS. You can be almost sure you won't get anywhere with microsoft's tools.

edit:
well, never mind.
I got something for you

http://blogs.artinsoft.net/jose_aguilar_bl...05/16/1442.aspx

This post has been edited by bj-kaiser: 09 July 2008 - 09:19 AM

[Andy.A]

ill look into it thanks

but agian being a pain in the a**.

where talking windows 2008 here, its not the updated version of ris. the wds that is supplied with 2008 doesn't have a compability mode.

maybe i should ask my question diffrent.

how do you take on image from debian?

can i convert that image to .wim image ?

will that image work with windows pe. if so can i write a unattended file for it.

i gues i'am thinking loud here when windows pe is loaded in the ram, can we write a script to start copy the image? like in ghost . but ghost is sector based a wim image is file based.
so that said . can the xml file create the nessesary file system maybe it can use a program that is capable to ?

[bj-kaiser]

maybe I had that worded wrong. You will have to use PXELINUX, I see no way to make a WIM image from any linux installation. WDS native mode still uses TFTP (from somewhere the bootloader has to come), so with the link from the previous post, you can set the network bootloader for a defined machine to pxelinux.0. Everything else you have to do is, to find the TFTP-root of the WDS TFTP server, put the pxelinux.0 loader into it and write a boot config file to install the Linux distribution of your choice. You can even use windows shares for the source files, in most distributions I know, although I'm not so sure about Debian.

I don't see how this is any more work than writing a working unattended file for windows. It's just that Microsoft for obvious reasons doesnt have a setup wizard built into WDS to allow you setting up a Linux installation system.

Imaging a Linux system to a WIM is harder to archive in my opinion. You would have to setup the Ext IFS driver in your Windows PE, even then noone could guarantee you that imagex works with that drive and you would probably lose the ACLs on restoring. So you would have to setup a script inside the Linux installation that restores the ACLs from a file.

I'd go with setting up the pxelinux loader in the WDS system.

[dexter.inside]

You're right, by WIMing the Ext you loose ACLs. Has anyone managed to get WDS to use pxelinux?

[bj-kaiser]

dexter.inside, on Jul 10 2008, 08:38 AM, said:

You're right, by WIMing the Ext you loose ACLs. Has anyone managed to get WDS to use pxelinux?

Doesn't look so hard to me. The link I posted tells you how to specify a different network bootloader for a specific machine. So unless it checks for a MS signed loader, you can tell it to use "\Boot\pxelinux.0", put the file and pxelinux.cfg folder into \Boot and that should be it.

[Andy.A]

i'm happy,

gues i didn't understand it to good. still going to skool for a reason

thanks alot