Help with imaging...

[Little-Miss]

As per my previous thread.

 

I have 20 Netbooks that need imaging. I cant get ghost to work over VLAN. I cant add Option 60 to my 2K8 server here at Hogwarts. Link2ICT says it has something to do with Tree Spanning on the switches, not to sure about that one.

 

I need a quick and uncovoluted way to image these machines.

 

I was testing Clonezilla Live out with USB and it reckoned it was gonna take 10 hours to create the image, does that sound right to you?! USB2 and 250Gb drive.

 

I've tried creating a mini lan with ghost using my computer but had no luck.

 

May seem pretty trivial to you guys but im struggling. Starting to hate current situation and want to be back as one school again

 

(How long am i allowed to play the Learning Network Manager card for? lol)

[sted]

possible way of doing it (possibly overcomplicated but should work

 

requirements

a decentish spec computer with free hdd space

network switch and cables

 

if your laptop/a spare pc has enough hdd/ram set up a server08 vm and allow it total access to the pcs lan port. give the server a fixed ip dosent really matter what so 10.10.10.1 should be fine. dcpromo the server to something like school.local new domain (makes no odds what you call it but wds needs to be on a domained pc iirc basically click next next next a lot) install dhcp service and configure to give out ips 10.10.10.10-10.10.10.254. Install wds role on server. Then use any wds tutorial you can find or i can post the quick one i did

 

failing that its possible to create ghost boot usb pens with fixed ips iirc (i gave up on ghost a long time ago i prefer wds/mdt) so make 20 or 10 and co in 2 batches etc. give you laptop a fixed ip and just connect it to an isolated switch and load the ghostcast server. When the pcs boot off the pens put your laptops ip address in and they should get the idea

[Little-Miss]

@sysman no

 

Right. Can someone explain why my mini ghost setup won't work. It's probably very simple, but so am I at the moment.

 

I have my XP machine. A desktop switch. Ghost and the netbooks. I've given my pc a static address, booted the netbooks with a boot USB I made with ghost, started ghost cast server, told ghost32 on netbooks the name of the session and the ip of the ghost server but that doesn't work. I've stared at this so long that my brain has switched off

[Chris_]

@sysman no

 

Right. Can someone explain why my mini ghost setup won't work. It's probably very simple, but so am I at the moment.

 

I have my XP machine. A desktop switch. Ghost and the netbooks. I've given my pc a static address, booted the netbooks with a boot USB I made with ghost, started ghost cast server, told ghost32 on netbooks the name of the session and the ip of the ghost server but that doesn't work. I've stared at this so long that my brain has switched off

 

This sounds very much like my Ghost setup. Are there any firewalls on the computer running Ghost that could be blocking it?

[sted]

unless you have dhcp working on your laptop (id just connect a normal installedpc toit and see if it gets an ip address) the netbooks wont find it (again unless your ghost boot media specifies an ip)

[plexer]

What was said above if the netbooks are connected to your laptop via a switch and isolated from the normal network they would still need a dhcp address?

 

If you download tftpd32 from TFTPD32 : an opensource IPv6 ready TFTP server/service for windows : TFTP server you can turn your laptop into a dhcp etc... server temporarily.

 

Ben

[Little-Miss]

Nope, firewall service isnt running on my machine unfortuantely. Got excited then!

[Little-Miss]

@plexer i've moved on slightly!

 

"TFTP...." followed by "PXE-T01: File not found"

 

SYMPTOM

 

When being started, the PXE client comes up with the PXE copyright message and completes the DHCP phase, but then displays:

 

TFTP....

 

After a while, the following error message is displayed:

 

PXE-T01: File not found

PXE-E3B: TFTP Error - File not found

 

Depending on the PXE client's system setup boot device list configuration, the PC then either stops or tries to boot from the next boot device in the system setup boot device list.

 

CAUSE

 

The "PXE-T01" and "PXE-E3B" errors indicate that the PXE client received a "file not found" error message from the TFTP server when sending a request to download its boot file. The most likely cause for this error message is that the TFTP server was not able to locate the requested file in the TFTP data directory (which is by default named 'tftpboot').

 

RESOLUTION

 

Make sure that the requested file is present in the TFTP data directory. You may want to examine the TFTP server log in order to determine what file has been requested by the PXE client. Also, make sure that the Windows account in which the TFTP server is running has the proper permissions to access the requested.

 

 

Que? Lol

 

Oh this is using your suggested program

Edited December 7, 2011 by Little-Miss

[Little-Miss]

Right...anyone?

 

I did get a pxe-e32 but lost it again lol

[jamin100]

does your boot CD have the correct drivers for the LAN card in the netbooks?

 

What switches have you got because both ghost and WDS work fine here and link2ICT control our switches too

 

If you cant get ghost to work how about something like a 4 bay USB to SATA dock to clone the drives?

StarTech.com 4 Bay eSATA USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 HDD Storage enclosure - 4-bay

[Guest TheLibrarian]

You don't want to use TFTPD for TFTP, use it for DHCP, DNS / WINS. TFTP would be used for a PXE boot, but you won't have that set up on your workstation I'd imagine, not would you really want to for this job.

 

You won't be able to Ghostcast without DNS / WINS.

 

Make sure you isolate the PC running TFTPD with the DHCP service running from the rest of the network.

 

 

As for Clonezilla, it sound like it's doing a full sector copy of the disk if it's going to take that long.

 

 

As a last resort, you could look at using Ghost to create the images on DVD / CD if you have an external writer of course.

[plexer]

As has been said disable all the options on tftp32d apart from dhcp you are just going to use this program running on your laptop as the dhcp server for your mini network, pick a suitable range and configure that side of it.

 

You will then boot your clients from your ghost disk and they will receive a dhcp lease and connect to the ghostcast server running on your laptop.

 

Ben

[IanT]

Hello Little-Miss,

 

I've not read the entire thread yet so sorry!!

 

Are you trying to image these netbooks with WDS or Ghost?

 

If Ghost are you using the Windows PE to load the ghost.exe?

 

Is the Network Driver loading on PXE Boot?

 

Are you or have you used the 3Com PXE\TFTP Tools which come with symantec ghost?