RIS for beginners ... where to start ?

[midiboy]

Hi everyone !

I am not new to unattended installations but I until now I have only created a DVD based installation for myself. I am now supposed to create something similar at work for all our office computers but I am a bit lost ...

I already gathered that RIS and Windows PE could be the things I need, after all we have access to all the Microsoft stuff and work in a MS domain.

I have just read a bit through the whitepapers on the MS WinXP SP2 OPK but somehow I am not getting anywhere. There is much talk about sysprep, preparing images for deployment etc. but thats not what I want.

I was thinking about installing Windows and successive installations the same way I did before, just over the network. Would this work at all or would it be too slow (100Mbit network) to be usable ?

Can anyone recommend a good beginners guide to RIS and Windows PE (I guess I need the latter to start the PC´s locally before kicking of the remote installation) ?

I already tried the search but didn´t come up with a lot of "beginners stuff"

Thanks for your help !

Alex

[midiboy]

Hi again,

in the meantime I have managed to come up with 2 good guides here.

Haven´t tried them out yet but at least theoretically I understand the concept now. However, those guides mostly talk about the server side of things.

What I still don´t know yet is how to create a boot disk/floppy with an PXE boot client that will work with every available NIC (not only 3Com and some Intel cards). Some NIC´s don´t seem to support booting from a network, at least most of the newer onboard NIC´s don´t.

Any ideas for that maybe ?

Thanks !

Alex

[tazmaniandevil]

midiboy

Most new onboard nic's WILL pxe boot quite happily. The problem is that RIS won't recognise the text mode driver. What you need to do is either find a suitable text mode driver, or modify the oem driver to allow RIS to recognise it. This driver should be copied to the i386 folder of your RIS setup.

You should read Intel information on this. Most other nic's are a variation of this.

You should see the Broadcom information on how to modify the driver .inf file. This is also the same for all other nic's

have fun...

Taz

[IceBlackIce]

my take on this is: prepare ris on the server and put the images of the OS...create the answers for the differents computers you have (different sn and/or different software to install) and you are all good with those who can boot natively from pxe and the textmode recognizes the driver...the ones who cant just boot from winpe to a share in the server and boot the config from there...there are lots of different programs to help you do that.

[InTheWayBoy]

Here's a nice run-down of a RIS process...and it's here at msfn of course:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=52667

That's at least a standard process...if you need anything special, then you'll have to figure it out via searches or posting here.

I've only been using RIS for a few months now, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I use it at my new job, where we have a domain containing 25+ computers. They are all Dell's, which mean they are all Intel based so that makes my life a little easier. On the first roll-out I could do approximately six units at a time without causing any problems with the network or server. I haven't had the balls to test more, but I will have to soon.

One RIS client takes about 30 minutes to go through properly...so it's much faster than other methods I've tried. And the PXE booting is awesome, since you don't need to have anything but an account on the server to work your magic.

The concept of RIS is to allow you to push an install over the network. By default it's just a plain jane Windows install. But almost all of the techniques used in an unattended install will work with RIS, with a few exceptions. I've noticed that if you have the machine join a domain during setup that seems to screw with my GUIRunOnce, since most of the time the first user who logs on isn't a domain admin...I haven't gotten around that yet. So for now I have RIS install and do it's thing, and then I walk up to the machine and manually join it to the domain.

Since you're on a domain now, you could also use Group Policies to push various software installs, as long as they are MSI installers. That takes a little work off the RIS install.

In regards to your boot disk question, if your clients don't natively support PXE then you can make a disk using RBFG.EXE, but sadly that is a closed disk, meaning you can't add support to it. I'll tell you this though, I would invest in some new NIC's that support PXE and just be done with it. First, it's a floppy...those things suck. They break, and many new computers don't have a floppy drive. Secondly, since you can't add support to it, I feel like it's kinda useless. But that's just me.

A few tips for you:

1. Triple check the *.sif you are using...RIS adds some extra things to a standard *.sif, and many relate to disk partitioning. By default I believe it is configured to blank your HD and make one big partition. Not a bad thing, but something to watch out for.

2. RIS will only do one partition, so if you have some scheme that requires two or more partitions, then you'll need to look into some extra steps....WinPE can help in this area.

3. When making a RIS server, please put the RIS file store on a seperate partition/drive. When you install RIS you also install SIS, which is a service that does something similar to CDImage. If you have multiple RIS images, which you will after some time, it will take all the identical files and replace them with links to just one...save you space. Problem is that this effects the whole drive, so if you have other things on that drive they may get optimized. Problem with that is if you want to move things to a different drive it can make it harder, as you might be dealing with a link and not an actual file.

4. To use RIS you need a user that has the ability to join computers to a domain...at least this is what I hear. I personally do all the RIS loads, so I just use my domain admin account. But if you want your users to be able to do it, then you'll need to delegate them the right to join the domain...I know that's not the whole thing, but it will at least get you in the right direction.

5. If you do anything to the image file, you should restart the "BINL" or "Remote Install" service first. This will force the RIS server to refresh the images, so any changes should be applied. NOTE: Some changes require two attempts before they become live...the first time you will still get the error, but the second time you try it should work. This is mostly when adding drivers. The first time you access the new drivers (Say, for your NIC), it will error out again, but will make it so that the next time it won't. Try again and all is well.

6. The RIS layout of an image is a little different. You'll have an I386 folder like always, but inside that it's different. I don't know how, but it looks like RIS expands a few things, so the source isn't the same as from the CD. I could be wrong on this one.

7. *.sif files are stored in the I386\templates folder of the image. You can have as many *.sif files in there as you want, with each being it's own menu selection. So lets say you have a vanilla install of WinXP SP2 on the RIS server. You could have one *.sif that would be a normal install, one for a unattended install, one for an unattended install with an $OEM folder, etc. Each *.sif would get it's own menu selction.

8. If you add an $OEM folder, it goes parallel to the I386 folder, not inside it. I've always done it that way, even on my CD's. But I recently read an M$ article that said to put the $OEM folder inside the I386 folder...but that was for a CD install. For RIS it is always parallel to the I386 folder.

9. If you have the ability to, you can use a neat feature called GUID. This is a long string of numbers and letters that are unique to a machine, much like a MAC address. If you get that info (All mine are on the PXE boot screen...I just hit the "Pause" key and wrote it down for each one) you can go into AD Users and Computers and add a computer. One screen will as for the GUID...enter it in as you saw it (Include spaces!), and then finish. What that means is that anytime a computer with that GUID connects to RIS, it won't ask you for the computer name, it will just punch it in for you. Makes RIS that much easier...

10. If you have any computers with a crazy HD config, I recommend you blank it first. This was only an issue for me when I was using a RIPrep image, which is a mixture of RIS and Sysprep. All the Dell's here had like three partitions that obviously were for the system restore and diagnostics Dell had. So I had to blank the drive and then everything was fine. Remember, RIS is mostly designed to just work with one partition.

Whew...that's all I got for now...guess I should get back to work now

[InTheWayBoy]

Also, something to think about in regards to IceBlackIce's suggestion about WinPE. As far as I know, if you boot WinPE from a RIS server, you can't use the network afterwards...because the network is transparently serving you the files, so it can't be used by WinPE. I think that's how it goes...I know I've heard a lot of people b***h about it, and maybe there is a fix, but I have yet to find one.

[IceBlackIce]

i wasnt talking about a winpe from ris but one from cd

[InTheWayBoy]

In that case you are good to go!