Freenas Project

[HarshReality]

So, I want to pick Kitchen's brain... Love the show and hit them constantly but my current issue/tweak/project I am running in circles on.

I had an older machine I installed FreeNAS on some time ago and used it as a media server for my networked xboxes running XBMC but that is neither here nor there. I build a new one with some donations and since we tend to stay with the things we are familiar with I again installed freenas.

Specs are here: http://only-harshreality.com/?p=25

Anyway, I activated tftp and setup a series of linux network installs & clonezilla (network booting, also on the blog) as my kids hate windows (I am so proud). Problem is my wife only knows windows.. the only way I get her to upgrade is forced but I am trying to setup RIS working with freenas so I can do a network install of windows XP using the network boot.

I know.. there are several who would say I should use this or that but the trick is I am trying to get it to work with what I have at hand ;) Soooo Mr. Kitchen what do you have in your bag of tricks ;)

[Infiltrator]

Are you able to boot a computer off the network at all? Can you get to the Reimaging process?

I also found this how to and it could shed some light for you

http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/ris-linux.php

Edited September 12, 2010 by Infiltrator

[dimaj]

I believe there's a software called unattended which allows you to have a network installation of windows. Here's the link: http://unattended.sourceforge.net/

hope this helps.

dimaj

[BlueWyvern]

I have done this before, trying to find my old notes or possibly the vmware files I had for the "server"

what I did was created a PE (I used the windows 7 based one cuz it had more network drivers :P) and then had a bat file I could run to install different operating systems. I worked in a computer shop and we used it for a mass installation onto PCs and Laptops over the network. There were times when it didn't work because of a lacking network driver but hey what are ya gonna do ya know?

from what I recall I did it as such

start the PE and ran a bat file to make a pretty little text menu for selection of OS installation

once the OS was picked it ran commands to create a partition through command line, then formatted said partition.

map a drive letter to a share that where the xp install files were located (net use x: \\share\me)

then there were some switches I ran with the setup command from XP.

said switches can be found here

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.a...60&seqNum=6

again I will see if i can find the vmware files and if so post them on like megaupload or something.. (sans the install files)

best of luck!

*edit* still cant find my files but I believe the command was "winnt32 /s:x:\xpfiles (or x:\ if you mapped directly to it) /syspart:c" **you can also build an unattended answer file to suit your install if its only going to be used for your wife's PC to input the key, computer name, etc**

also im sure you are familiar but just to make it easier you can for your format, "format c: /fs:ntfs /q /y"

im still looking for notes as well for how to do the fdisk automatically... it wasnt command line with switches if i recall, but it was done by sending a script to fdisk (again if i remember correctly)

I get the feeling there was also something to set the partition on the drive as bootable / install the bootloader... but i might be confusing it with earlier stage stuff while I was trying to perfect it...

YMMV on this info.

Edited September 16, 2010 by BlueWyvern