A combination of things has moved me towards deploying images instead of using RIS cd based setups. These were:

1. Our RIS server broke.

2. Reading about a lot of summer jobs on here where people were talking about images and creating new ones

3. How long it used to take the machines to be ready from building, to WSUS'ing and then to installing the GPO based software and then installing Adobe CS3 with the script.

So I decided to take a look at three options.

1. Rebuild the RIS server

2. Move to WDS

3. Look at a Fog server based on what I have read here.

I discounted the RIS server. Let's move on. I've tried the move to WDS but maybe I have been spoilt with the RM build and RIS processes where you are asked to enter a machine name. This was great in the day - but WDS wasn't letting me do it. The LEA are writing a script at the moment to help me out.

So today I tried going with Fog. Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop was installed onto a Celeron 1Gb machine. It went on well but because we are behind an authenticating ISA server (at the LEA) I couldn't get connected to download any updates or the Fog application.

A quick chat with a friend (Tim Lloyd of Censornet) pointed me to this website:

http://utcursch.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/isa-proxy-authentication-woes/

A quick follow of the instructions and we were soon on our way. Ubuntu updated itself. Hoorah.

Fog downloaded but when installing it stopped on (I think I remember) base-image - so that package had to be removed, purged and re-installed individually. A quick re-install of Fog went through and I soon had the service up and running.

Next step - using the Fog docs on their site was to register one client and run some tests. So after checking the PXE boot options we were ready to go. But..... NO joy - timing out at the TFTP part after connecting to DHCP and getting an address.

A quick dash to the Fog forums and the answer was found here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/forums/forum/730843/topic/3276833

Eventually the MemCheck test worked. It was then 4 o'clock and five a side football was calling.

The next job is to create two universal images - one with CS3 and one without CS3 (as we have some Celeron machines). A message from R0M on here has provided me with some advice. This website also looks as though it could be handy:

http://www.msfn.org/board/howto-using-driverpacks-w-sysprep-t99991.html

So let's see how it goes. I've got some new spotlights so let's hope I don't get lost in the Fog.

GJE