Thinstation problems with RIS

[tosca925]

I have been testing thinstation on some old machines on our network and with the help of Ric i managed to get it working. The problem i have now is that i have over 100 computers from the same Manufacturer that have Realtek 8139 nics in them. When i try to re-image them now with RIS they go straight to the thinstation image and not giving me the F12 RIS option. Other computers that have SiS onbard NICS work fine and pick up RIS fine after the F12. If i remove the 'thinstation.nbi' from the DHCP options 'Boot FIle Name' then the Realtek NIC PC's work again with RIS.

Surely this is not right. Is there anyone who knows of a solution to this?

[Ric_]

Just a thought but you could perhaps update the NIC firmware.

[Geoff]

yep, sounds like buggy firmware to me too.

[CyberNerd]

Hang on, are your giving the machines conflicting instructions - boot RIS and boot thinstation.nbi ? or do you supply a menu to choose between the two -in which case remove the DHCP option. I did this a while back and found pre-staging the accounts in AD, then telling them to ignore RIS was the most reliable method - but replacing the RIS server was easier.

[Ric_]

@CyberNerd: Netboot is being used to boot thinstation and this requires the bootfile to be specified by DHCP. What this then means is that you can opt to PXE boot the machine if you so wish. The RIS PXE boot does not look for a DHCP option specifying a bootfile.