RIS partition size questions..........?

[Kyle]

I am new to this site and new to being a School ICT Technician. My boss (System's Manager) is living in the dark ages and I want to improve things.

 

I have been playing with RIS since Xmas and have it working quite well. I have done a few workstation images already and edited .sif files accordingly.

 

I came across a problem today, I created an image on a PC with a 80gb HD, i tried to deploy to a PC with a 40gb HD and it will not work because there is not enough space.

 

Is there any way this can be altered to work on a smaller HD?

[beeswax]

I've had this problem with RIS, apart from once when I managed to get an image from a larger drive onto a smaller one - and I still don't know how it happened.

One idea that I haven't tried out yet is to partition the larger hdd so that the OS and software is on the smallest possible partition, then leave the rest of the hdd unformatted. There's no reason why this should work, as you'd still be moving from a larger drive to a smaller drive. There's probably a switch in there you could use which would simplify it all.

beeswax

[Dos_Box]

Ric knows how to do this. PM him.

[Dos_Box]

OOps. I thought Beeswax's post was the first one. In answer to the origional question. No. The RIS image held on the server will always be reported as the size of the disk it was taken from (even if the total file size is not). And you cannot change this because it will bork the scavenger service when it looks for files..

[beeswax]

thanks for that DB, it'll stop me wasting time in half term.

beeswax

[OverWorked]

Are you using RIPRep based images?

 

I've only ever used CD-based images, and haven't had that problem. The original image was created from the XP installation disc. I've succesfully used it on drives between 6GB and 80GB with no difficulty.

[Dos_Box]

Thats differnt. With RIPPrep it have to be a drive of equal of larger size. The CD image is a base image only and is treated like a CD.

[OverWorked]

Sorry, I didn't explain myself properly.

 

What I meant was: Do you have to use RIPPrep? Can you use a CD based image and then install everything via group policy? I know it's a lot of work initially, but worth it in the long run.

 

CD-based images are a lot more flexible than RIPRep-based. This is one of the reasons.

 

Just my 2p worth.

[E1uSiV3]

I use CD based images at the old place for the exact reasons stated, it worked on all our hardware configurations (using oempreinstall to install extra drivers) installed all the non msi software (such as Macromedia Studio MX 2004 after pulling it to bits and writing unattended install scripts) and performed tweaks such as removing the intel igfxtray icon from workstations and installing the macromedia license. The rest of the software was deployed using GPOs and GPOs locked down the comps. Printers are installed using con2prt (good old NT4 resource kit) via batch scripts assigned to computer rooms.

[ChrisH]

Sorry, I didn't explain myself properly.

 

What I meant was: Do you have to use RIPPrep? Can you use a CD based image and then install everything via group policy? I know it's a lot of work initially, but worth it in the long run.

 

CD-based images are a lot more flexible than RIPRep-based. This is one of the reasons.

 

Just my 2p worth.

 

Same here. It does take that bit of work and can take a little longer to install but it's worth it.

[Kyle]

Thanks Guys,

 

Looks liek I'm stuffed then.........lol

 

I have tried today to make a Unattended Windows XP SP2 disc with software that installs from scipts during Install.

 

All has gone well so far and have even got it installing Office 2003, Net framework 1.1, Sun Java.

 

Will try out more when i get time.

[ajbritton]

All has gone well so far and have even got it installing Office 2003, Net framework 1.1, Sun Java.

 

Just to point out that all 3 titles mentioned here (Office, .NET and JAVA) have MSI based installers which are perfectly suited to installation via GPO.

 

- Get the Office Custom Installation Wizard (from the Office Resoure Kit) to create custom transforms for Office

 

- Can't remember where I got my .NET MSI from, but it should be quite easy (appdeploy.com may be of use)

 

- The SUNS JAVA installer IS MSI based but is hidden away in the .EXE. Again, there is a method on appdeploy.com which explains how to obtain the MSI. I use a custom transform which disables the autoupdate routine.

[E1uSiV3]

FYI the .net installer is available from WSUS too, j2se comes in 2 types, online and offline install, grab the offline install and open the exe with winrar and extract the contents, including the msi. As AJ said take a peek at http://www.appdeploy.com it is an awesome site for creating unattended installs.

[Kyle]

Found the info below on Blog, will try it out this week. Let me know if any one else trys it out.

 

RIS problem - restore image to smaller harddisk

 

Yesterday I had a problem with RIS (remote installation services), something that's categorized as "by design". The problem is this: when you create an image using riprep.exe it takes an image of your harddisk (of course it does) but it also stores characteristics of your partition on the server (e.g. partition of 40 GB). When you try to 'download' the image (using PXE-boot) to another smaller harddisk (which has enough capacity to hold the complete image however, e.g. 4GB used of the 40 GB) it won't work (nice little error message, see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320982 for the official description and solution). Yeah great :-)

 

So, I came to the conclusion that RIS has to store somewhere on the server the size of the partition that was used to make the image (what a deductive brain, wow). The file in question is Imirror.dat (in the i386\Mirror1 directory). It's a binary file, but using a tool like WinHex you can clearly see that it holds the partition data (as well as the used HAL, OS version, directory for the OS installation, file system type, drive letter). Luckily we had another Imirror.dat file that was created by running riprep.exe on a computer with a smaller harddisk size. In fact only 15 bytes in the two files were different. If I find some time, I'll try to find out where the partition size is kept, but for now replacing the file of the image that was too big by the other one (created by riprep on the computer with the smaller harddisk size) worked like a charm.

 

For people who don't have an image of a smaller harddisk yet, the following procedure can help:

 

1. Use the computer with the smallest harddisk that needs to be RIS-ed.

2. If it already has an OS on it, start riprep.exe (via the UNC path \\server\reminst\); otherwise install an OS first (just the core is enough) and start riprep.exe.

3. While running riprep.exe on the computer with the smaller harddisk, watch the Images folder on the server, in particular the Mirror1 directory of the new image; the Imirror.dat file is made very early in the riprep.exe process (before the files of the harddisk are copied to the server).

4. Grab that Imirror.dat file and copy it to the Mirror1 folder of the image to-be-fixed (but make sure you keep the original file by renaming it).

 

Hopefully this information is helpful for other people struggling with this as well. Please note that this is not a supported solution (refer to KB article).

[tosca925]

I stumbled across Kyle's post when browsing the forum and i also have the exact same problem. I had a look at the blog mentioned in his post and was very intrigued to find out if it worked.

 

Well i can confirm it does. I created a image on a 80gb hard drive when normally i use 40gb for all my images. Problem i had now was the new image was too big. I did have a look at the file in HEX but to be honest could not find where it said the size(did not look to hard though)

 

So i thought Fu** it and copied a imirror.dat file from one of my other 40gb images and restarted the RIS service. The image went across like a charm,

 

 

Well done Kyle for find this, this will help no end.