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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Brian,<br>
<br>
On 03/15/2014 10:31 PM, Brian Rak wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:5324C6C2.4070003@gameservers.com" type="cite">
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<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/14/2014 6:10 AM, Floris Bos
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:5322D598.4000500@je-eigen-domein.nl"
type="cite">
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- While iPXE is able to pass the static IP configuration easily
to the installer of Linux distributions as kernel parameters,
this is not the case for other operating systems. If you also
want fully automated deployments of Windows and FreeBSD you have
a problem.<br>
</blockquote>
It's not really a problem, it's just a *lot* more work. I've
solved this for both Windows and FreeBSD, and it's pretty
annoying.<br>
<br>
Windows is actually the easier of the two (assuming your doing
installs). You create a WinPE image, and have it boot from DHCP
and start the Windows installer. The Windows installer uses an
unattend file to complete the installation. Your unattend file
contains a configuration that causes another script to run after
the OS install complete. Said script reaches out to a remote
server to grab the install information. In theory, you could even
pull this information right from DHCP again. Windows does have an
API for this, though I can't say that I've used it. <br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
We also have implemented both Windows and FreeBSD in our
provisioning software, and they indeed work fine WHEN USING DHCP.<br>
However the problem I was pointing at is getting Windows and FreeBSD
to work in situations where using DHCP is not an option, and it
would be nice to use a static network configuration instead.<br>
<br>
With Linux distributions like Debian one can easily pass the static
network settings you embedded in iPXE to the Debian installer
through kernel parameters along the lines of:<br>
<br>
==<br>
kernel <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://$server/linux">http://$server/linux</a> netcfg/choose_interface=$mac
debian-installer/locale=en_US keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap=us
netcfg/disable_dhcp=true netcfg/get_ipaddress=$ip
netcfg/get_netmask=$netmask netcfg/get_gateway=$gateway
netcfg/get_nameservers=$server netcfg/get_hostname=$hostname
netcfg/get_domain= preseed/url=<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://$server/kickstart.php">http://$server/kickstart.php</a><br>
initrd <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://$server/initrd.gz">http://$server/initrd.gz</a><br>
boot<br>
==<br>
<br>
However with Windows and FreeBSD that is not that trivial. <br>
<br>
<br>
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--
Yours sincerely,
Floris Bos
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