Remote Installation Services (RIS)

[Uraken]

Thanks john i had dhcp server installed but non-fuctional pxe and ris automatically search for local dhcp if it finds one it looks no further but my dhcp server was on another server so i removed the non-operational one and bingo.

[SOSAGES]

i used RIS a few years ago its very nice.

I assume most people use it every term to format / reinstall at the start of the summer hols ready for the next bunch of students to try and break the machines

[Enzomatrx]

Quick question:

Can RIS images be stored and deployed from an external USB hard drive?
Would it be as simple as mounting the \REMINST share on the server to the external drive?

We're out of room on our partition for images and we're thinking just throwing in some external 300GB drives will be easier than anything.

Thanks for any help.

[eean]

Don't see why not. USB hard drives are seen by windows as the same as normal hard drives.

[mac_shinobi]

Might be a little bit slower as the USB 2 hard drives have the USB 2 bottle neck compared to how fast the SCSI hard drives are on the server.

Might be better off getting a nas with a few hundred gigs on it ie a 500gb lacie NAS or something like that and shoving that on a gigabit port and doing it that way ?

[leletto]

Hi,

I need some help with RIS. What is the parameter for the .sif for chanhing the autoformat option?

I often reinstall my customers computer that asks me to leave his files on the pc. So I use a Pe enviroment to create a folder in C drive named Backup, then I move all the contents of the C drive in this backup folder. After that I reboot and start installing windows from the original windows CD and it ask me to leave the filesystem intacts. When the installation is finished the content of the C drive is the 3 windows folder ( windows, programs, docs & settings ) and my Backup folder.
With this method I didn't need to use an external drive for backing up the customers files.

Now I've builded up a PXE server for remote installation, following some guide here and there...But, when I boot from PXE network, windows setup didn't ask me to keep the filesystem but start formatting the drive as soon as I press the enter key.

Did I forgot some Unattended parameters or something like that?