Advanced RIS
182 C HAPTER 5 SETTING UP AND ROLLING OUT WINDOWS SERVER
<META KEY=ENTER ACTION="REBOOT">
<TITLE> Client Installation Wizard Installation Information</TITLE> <FOOTER> [ENTER] continue</FOOTER>
<BODY left=5 right=75> <BR>
<BR>
The following settings will be applied to this computer installation.
Verify these settings before continuing. <BR>
<BR>
Computer account: %MACHINENAME% <BR>
<BR>
Global Unique ID: %GUID% <BR>
<BR>
Server supporting this computer: %SERVERNAME% <BR>
<BR> <BR>
To begin Setup, press ENTER. If you are using the Remote
Installation Services boot floppy, remove the floppy
diskette from the drive and press ENTER to continue. </BODY>
</OSCML>
This panel also basically just displays some information. But notice something odd about the <META> commands—they say that no matter whether you press ESC or Enter, you’ll reboot. But you’d think that “reboot” would, well, reboot the computer—which would sort of abort the whole RIS process. But no—on this particular panel, “reboot” means “full speed ahead!” for the RIS install. So, we’ve seen that a standard RIS install progresses from welcome.osc to login.osc to choice.osc
(in “stealth” mode) to osauto.osc (also “stealthed”) to oschoice.osc to warning.osc and then
finally to install.osc. Here’s where I’m going to make use of this to control the machine name: I’ll
add an extra panel between oschoice.osc and warning.osc and include a form that gives the user the
ability to enter a machine name.
Looking back at oschoice.osc, you recall that we got from oschoice.osc to warning.osc by way
of the form in oschoice.osc: the <FORM ACTION=“WARNING”> command. That’s where I’ll
break the chain from oschoice.osc to warning.osc, by modifying that one item in oschoice.osc
from <FORM ACTION=“WARNING”> to <FORM ACTION=“PICKNAME”>. Using the other .osc files as a model, I then come up with this file, which I name pickname.osc:
<OSCML>
<META KEY=ESC ACTION="REBOOT"> <META KEY=F3 HREF="OSCHOICE"> <TITLE>Client Installation Wizard Choosing Names</TITLE>
<FOOTER>[ENTER] continue [ESC] Reboot F3 Pick Install</FOOTER> <BODY>
INSTALLING SERVER 2003 WITH REMOTE INSTALLATION SERVICES 183
<FORM ACTION="WARNING">
Machine Name: <input NAME="MACHINENAME" VALUE=%MACHINENAME% maxlength=20><br> %OPTIONS%
</SELECT> </FORM> </BODY> </OSCML>
This file starts off by defining ESC as “reboot” and F3 as “return to oschoice.osc.” Then it
defines title and footer text for the screen. Then it defines a form that will progress to the
warning.osc panel, once you press Enter for this form. Inside the form is just one field—an input
field that lets you type a machine name of up to 30 characters. The NAME=“MACHINENAME” means that whatever you type will go into the environmental variable named MACHINENAME. The VALUE=%MACHINENAME% tells the Client Installation Wizard to offer as default text the name that RIS wants to use, like ADMINMARK1.
Still not sure this would be useful? Then consider this: Suppose you had to roll out hundreds of servers, each with static IP addresses—as a large international Web-hosting ISP had to recently. They built themselves some RIS Client Installation Wizard panels that let them type in IP addresses and subnet masks, then pass that information to the ristndrd.sif file. Now, in my example, I used
the built-in environment variable named MACHINENAME, but there’s nothing keeping you from making up your own environment variable. For example, what if I’d added these two <input> commands to my pickname.osc file:
IP address:<input name="IPADR"><br> Subnet mask:<input name="SUBMSK">
Then, inside ristndrd.sif, I just adjust the script so that it doesn’t get IP addresses from
DHCP, but instead assigns static IP addresses. Part of the revised ristndrd.sif, then, would
include these lines:
IPAddress=%IPADR% SubnetMast=%SUBMSK%
You can create as many new environmental variables you like—IP address is just one example. RIS offers a lot of flexibility—so much so that it’s changed my PC hardware buying habits. From now on, it’s all PXE machines for me.
Advanced RIS IV: New NIC Drivers
Now, all of this will work fine, unless your computer requires a NIC driver that’s not on the I386 for the OS that you’re installing. For example, suppose you wanted to use Server 2003’s RIS to roll out Windows 2000 Professional installs but your computers had a NIC that made its market debut after February 2000, when 2000 Pro shipped. Supposing that this new computer can PXE boot, then it’ll boot to the RIS server all right and Setup will start. But just a few minutes into the text mode Setup, you may see this message:
The network server does not support booting Windows 2000.