• Windows Xp

Thanks for the info. It looks neat but I don't see this doing anything I can't do in PXE.

Aug 01, 2007  I use Cerberus FTP Server. Its a freeware, and its really easy to use. Like prathapml said, Gene6 is really expensive! Setting Up A Windows XP PXE Server (DRAFT v2). A downloadable version of this guide is available here - the.cmd files referred to in the guide are included in.

The cost is also quite high for something as basic this. Setting up a proper PXE environment is fairly quick and easy. As with most things Linux, support is mostly a matter of making sure the server has power.

To be honest, what really turns me off about the product is that it's Symantec. I've been badly burned by Symantec in the past. By burned I mean we had a $13K Symantec security deployment at a Hospital that ended up in a fully compromised Windows network due to a venerability in the Symantec security suite. Yup, the software designed to protect us was the same software that got us hacked. That was about 8 years ago. Perhaps Symantec has changed.

But from reading things like bulletin SYM08-003 it doesn't look like it.

Yesterday i explained how one can boot normal OS using PXE. Today let's plunge into dark, evil world of windows machines and Microsoft quasi-standards. First though I'll have some fixes to yesterdays conf files:. To get graphical UI i used vesamenu.c32 from SystemrescueCD and added line UI sysresccd/isolinux/vesamenu.c32 at the beginning of pxelinux.cfg/default. I removed PROMPT, TIMEOUT, ONTIMEOUT, and MENU DEFAULT directives, as i didn't need them - it's always better to wait for user input and boot right choice instead of booting twice, right?. I tried to use syslinux's pxelinux.0, but ended reverting to sysresccd's one (it told me that menu.c32 isn't correct chain file) So, on to the show now, let's head into black magic of windows standards and not-quite-so-compatible software. First thing to get was syslinux (hey, i had that one already!?) for memdisk loader.

Memdisk loader is nice piece of software which enabled me to use ISO image as initrd to boot from. I copied it into $tftproot/images/memdisk. Next thing is to get Windows XP (2003 should work too) installation disc.

I modified it using nlite and some patches, so i won't have to download them after installation. Tweaked some settings to fit my needs too, but nothing serious, so i won't break things.

I didn't end with finalising it into ISO image though - there's one more thing to do with it. It looks like windows needs additional driver to make use of RAMdisk after the GUI part of installation boots up. I used - it's OpenSource and stuff. After unpacking it i cd'ed to it's directory and then make this into cab file using makecab WVBlk32.sys WVBLK32.SY and copying WVBLK.SY into I386 dir in xp disc. But that's not all - apparently windows doesn't load all drivers automagically - i ended up adding it into modules load list.

By adding those lines to appropriate sections of i386/TXTSETUP.SIF: SourceDisksFiles wvblk32.sys = 1,4,4,1,1,4 SCSI.Load wvblk32 = wvblk32.sys,4 SCSI wvblk32 = 'WinVBlock RAMdisk driver' Now all that's left is to pack XP installation CD into ISO image and we're done. Despite having MagicIso i used - there was easy howto for it, but for backup's sake I'll describe entire process:. First thing Is to install (unpack) it. Fire it up and specify directory containing unpacked XP disc and file to pack it into (it can't be inside the source directory). Then, on Configuration-Boot specify boot.dat file (it's in CDImage dir).

Windows Xp

Click on Creation, then on Start Image Creation and voila! Now everything that was left was copy brand new ISO file into $tftproot/windowsxp/ dir and add new entries to pxelinux.conf/default: label WinXP menu label Windows XP SP3 kernel images/memdisk append raw iso initrd windowsxp/XPDISC.iso That should do the trick.

I also made second image without 'Press any key to boot installation disc'. To do that, i removed i386/bootfix.bin file. And remember, it takes looooong to download whole disc (for me 570MB) to RAM. On my EEE PC 1000H and 100MBit connection it took like 3 minutes. But the initial driver loading took approx 0.3 sec, and i think it would take really short to copy files from ram to disc after partitioning, so it's fair trade for me. And no additional discs/USB drives either!

Links that i used during this experiment:. http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/Default.aspx.

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