For remote installations using RIS to work, conditions on the network (RIS server, DNS, DHCP, TFTP) and the remote target computer must support RIS-based installations. In addition to the supporting network services discussed previously, there are some server requirements. To perform an automated installation, there must be an accessible and correctly configured RIS server and one or more established OS images. Also, users performing installations must have rights to create computer accounts in the domain.
Likewise, there are requirements for the client systems. The target machine must meet certain hardware requirements to support the remote operation capabilities used by RIS. Client computers must support remote booting using PXE version 1 ROM or have one of the network cards supported by Microsoft PXE emulation software (a NIC that is supported by the RIBF). If the client has PXE-based ROM BIOS, the NIC must be set as the primary boot device. When using the RIS boot floppy disk, the floppy disk should be set as the first boot device.
A Windows OS installation by RIS simplifies deployment of remote systems. The RIS installation process is straightforward, as reflected in the following steps:
The process of remote installation begins when the target computer is booted from a floppy disk (or PXE-enabled ROM BIOS). The target system boots using either PXE boot ROM or RIS boot disk, detects the NIC, loads the NIC drivers, and then displays the MAC address of the network adapter.
The system then contacts a DHCP server (using DHCP broadcast) and gets an IP address and a referral to a RIS server. If the DHCP server and the RIS server are not the same machine, the client contacts the RIS server. If they are the same computer, the next step is done automatically.
The RIS server contacts Active Directory to determine whether the client is a known (prestaged) client and obtains the target computer's UUID. Otherwise, the UUID is obtained from the PXE-enabled NIC or is autogenerated based on the MAC address of the NIC.
The target computer then loads TFTP to copy the CIW to the client computer. If the default Startrom.com is used, CIW will prompt a user to press F12 to start the network service supporting remote installation, as follows:
Screen display: Microsoft Windows Remote Installation Boot Floppy <copyright notice> <Network card information> Node: <#> DHCP... TFTP........................ Press F12 for network service boot
Caution
If you have configured the RIS server to provide a fully automated installation by renaming the copy of Startrom.n12 in the RemoteInstallOsChooserI386 folder to Startrom.com, the prompt to press F12 is bypassed. Be sure to make a backup of the original Startrom.com before replacing it. When you are performing RIS installations, you must be very quick on the draw. The prompt to press F12 for a network service boot has a very, very short timeout of about three seconds. If you do not press the F12 key quickly enough after startup, the following error is displayed:
Exiting remote installation boot floppy. Please remove the floppy disk and reboot the workstation.
This error message seems to imply that if you remove the floppy and reboot that this will accomplish something useful—as opposed to merely failing to boot because the system has no OS on it, which is what is likely to happen.
At this point, you have to reboot the computer—if you want to continue performing the remote installation, leave in the floppy disk, and press the F12 key … quickly. Although you can work around it, it is far more convenient to rename Startrom.n12 (in the RemoteInstallOsChooserI386 folder) as Startrom.com and have RIS remote boot bypass F12.
Pressing the F12 key (if you do it quickly enough) invokes the Client Installation Wizard Welcome page and tells you the logon credentials required to use the wizard, namely, a domain name and a user name and password combination that is valid for the domain and has the permission to add computers to the domain. To continue with the installation, press Enter, and the Logon page is displayed.
The Logon page requires you to supply the user name, password, and domain for a valid user account with the rights to perform the remote installation. The computer name of the RIS server that the target computer is connected to is also displayed. When you press Enter, the main menu of the CIW is displayed.
If you have enabled user-configurable options, such as custom installation, a list of available options (Automatic Setup, Custom Setup) is displayed. Select the desired installation option, and press Enter.
A list of available operating system installation options is displayed next. This list can include images created by using either RIPrep, RISetup, or both. Custom answer files (such as Remboot.sif) might be associated with these images to control the installation and configuration of the installed operating system. Select the operating system you want to install, and press Enter.
The Warning page displays this caution: "All data on the hard drive will be deleted!" This is your reminder that the partitions on the (first) hard disk will be deleted and the drive with be formatted with NTFS. Press Esc to cancel or Enter to continue.
The CIW displays the Installation Information page, showing the settings for the computer account and GUID. The defaults for these settings are as follows:
Computer account name is usually generated based on the settings on the RIS server, commonly using some derivation of the user name with an incrementing number.
GUID is the node ID either obtained from the BIOS or generated by prefixing a string of 20 zeros ("0") to the front of the network card's MAC address. If the computer account is prestaged, the existing UUID from the computer account in Active Directory is used.
The computer name is the name of the server providing the remote installation services and supporting this computer.
If you want to change any of this information, you can do so, then press Enter to begin the Windows Setup portion of the remote installation.
The CIW ends, and the Windows Setup program launches, displaying standard setup messages, and then automatically formatting the hard disk as a single partition. Windows Setup then copies files to the hard disk drive on the target computer and then reboots the target computer. At this point, the process diverges depending upon whether you are installing an operating system image from RISetup or RIPrep:
If installing from a RISetup image, Windows Setup switches to GUI-mode setup at the Installing Windows portion. Setup continues, using the information specified by the .sif answer files and prompting you for configuration data that was left unspecified.
If installing from a RIPrep image, the Mini-Setup is performed, and the computer is rebooted again, this time into a fully functional Windows Server 2003 installation with the configuration settings reflecting the master installation on which the RIPrep OS image is based.
Troubleshooting: This is supposed to be an automated installation, but I'm being asked questions
If information specified in the .sif file is incorrect and Setup encounters an error, Setup will prompt you to provide correct data. After correcting the error condition, Setup will continue using the .sif file.
Troubleshooting: I get a message saying, "No reply from a server"
If no RIS server is available on the network, you will get the error message "No reply from a server" after DHCP is displayed on the screen. Verify that the RIS server is operating correctly and that it has been configured to respond to this client; pay particular attention to DHCP issues with multihomed servers. Once DHCP and RIS configuration issues are resolved, reboot the target computer and retry the RIS installation.
If the RIS server is overburdened, it might not reply, as well. Each RIS server can handle only a limited number of simultaneous client installations. The optimal number is between 70 and 75, depending on the current activity. In a large enterprise where you might deploy hundreds of computers at the same time, you can have multiple RIS servers. You could then load balance requests to these servers using a RIS referral server, or you could simply configure all RIS servers to respond to all RIS clients (which undoes the added security you gain from prestaging computers).
Also, remember that if you've selected the Do Not Respond To Unknown Clients option, you will be able to install only computers that have been prestaged, as discussed in the section entitled "Prestaging Clients in Active Directory" earlier in this chapter.
So far, we've covered just about everything you must know to deploy and manage RIS. You've learned how to install and configure RIS servers, how to create images and then optimize them with service packs, how to associate answer files with RIS images, and how to install clients using RIS. Before you head off and start using RIS, here are a few more tips and tricks that you should know about.
Everything you learned in Chapter 5 about using $OEM$ folders works with RIS. After you associate a properly configured answer file with an image, you can put hot fixes and security updates along with a Cmdlines.txt file in the $OEM$ directory. You can include drivers in driver folders and perform other preinstallation tasks as well. The catch is that RIS doesn't look for an I386$OEM$ or IA64$OEM$ folder. RIS looks for a $OEM$ folder at the same level as the I386/ IA64 folder. This means you must create the folder at RemoteInstallSetupEnglishImages ImageName$OEM$, where ImageName is the name of the image folder.
After you update the folder structure of the RIS server, you should stop and then start the Remote Installation (BINLSVC) service on the RIS server after copying any necessary files into the distribution folder. To do this, log on locally or remotely to the RIS server; you can do this from a command prompt by typing
net stop "remote installation" net start "remote installation"
When installation is initialized on a client, the pages shown are set by the client wizard. Each page is created as an .osc file that controls what the user sees during each stage of the installation process. There are Welcome, Logon, Main Menu, Operating System Choice, Client Installation, and Warning pages.
The .osc files are created using OSCML—a markup language very similar to plain old HTML. In fact, if you know anything about HTML, you could easily customize these files so that they better suit your needs. If you want to try this, remember that you can have only one set of client installation pages per language variant per RIS server. For the English language, the files are stored in the RemoteInstallOsChooserEnglish folder, and you can make edits to these files using any standard text editor, such as Notepad.
The files you'll want to consider modifying include the following:
Welcome.osc The Welcome page that is shown when the client wizard starts
Login.osc The login page used to log in to the Active Directory domain
Oschoice.osc The Operating System Choice page that lets you choose an OS image
Warning.osc A message that warns the user that the hard disk on the computer running the client is about to be erased
Install.osc The installation information page that shows the computer name, GUID, and RIS server that will be used
During the client installation, the primary pages are navigated as follows: You start on the Welcome page, continue to Login, then Oschoice, then Warning, and finally Install. You might see a few other pages, but the preceding ones are the important ones that you must examine and work with to customize the client installation.
Sometimes you must use unsigned NIC drivers for a computer. If you put these drivers in a $OEM$$1DriversNetwork folder and set OemPnPDriversPath to include this path in the Ristndrd.sif script, everything should be hunky-dory, right? Well, not really. If the drivers that you want to use are unsigned, the client wizard will get to the network loading stage and then report that the network server doesn't support booting XYZ operating system and cannot continue. To work around this problem, you must update the [Unattended] section of the Ristndrd.sif file to include the following:
DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
Remember, putting the driver in this folder copies it to the I386/IA64 folder on the target computer. You might need to experiment a bit to determine which .inf and .sys files the driver should use.
As discussed previously, after you update the folder structure of the RIS server, you should stop and then start the Remote Installation (BINLSVC) service on the RIS server after copying any necessary files into the distribution folder. To do this, log on locally or remotely to the RIS server; you can do this from a command prompt by typing the following:
net stop "remote installation" net start "remote installation"