natan770

Hi there; Yes, it is possible to save the credentials. But, because this is a RAMdisk image, you have to write this information within the package. To do this, you need to : - un-gzip initrd.gz - mount initrd (it's an ISO) - modify the file etc/rc.ping (it's a Perl script) that is within the rootfs.tar.bz2 archive file - umount initrd - gzip initrd. You will need an unix system to do this. But, hey! you've got the PING Linux. If you've got enough RAM, you can follow all these steps and modify rc.ping accordingly to your needs. This point definitely needs to find its way in the Howto, I think. Regards Natan

Hi there! Just added : - 7zip 4.32 (Lang: EN) 7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio. 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL. The main features of 7-Zip: * High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression * 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL * Supported formats: o Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR o Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB * For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip * Self-extracting capability for 7z format * Integration with Windows Shell * Powerful File Manager * Powerful command line version * Plugin for FAR Manager * Localizations for 60 languages - Paint.NET 2.5 (Lang: EN) Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. - Microsoft PhotoStory 3.0.1115.0 (Lang: EN) Bring your digital photos to life with Photo Story 3 for Windows. Download Photo Story 3 for free and experience your photos in amazing new ways. - Microsoft Producer 2.0.1389.0 (Lang: EN) Microsoft Producer is an add-on tool for MS Office PowerPoint 2003. Producer 2003 is designed to let you easily incorporate audio, video, HTML files and still images with your MS PowerPoint slides to create dynamic and rich-media presentation. What can I Do with Producer? You can install and run Producer on your computer that is running the Microsoft Window 2000 or Window XP operating system. Producer is a standalone application that lets you take your PowerPoint slides and synchronize them with audio and video. This can be audio and video that you have already recorded on your computer or new audio and video content that you record in Producer. Furthermore, you can add still images and HTML files to your presentation. Working with Producer, you can create a variety of presentation based on your specific needs. - Winamp 5.12 (Lang: EN) (Courtesy of RoqueSpear) Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity music player that supports MP3, MP2, CD, MOD, WAV and other audio formats, custom interfaces called skins, audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins. There are three versions of Winamp. The Lite version has all the features described above, the Standard version adds Microsoft WMA/ASF support and features Visualization Studio and the Full version has all that plus Mjuice compressed audio format support. Features * Playback: playlist, randomize, shuffle, repeat * Equalizer: ten band, load/save, song-specific pre-amplifier equalizer settings * Visualization: built-in spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope, plug-in support * Playlist editor: drag and drop, load/save, ID3 tag editor, sort Interface: extremely customizable, dockable windows, skin support. (All these applications can be deployed directly onto your PC through the SysAngel Updater, which you can get there: http://www.windowsdream.com. It's connected to a regularly-updated software repository, and it's free). Regards Natan http://updater.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://updater.windowsdream.com/why_msi.html -- Understand why installing packaged MSI is better

Hi there! Thank you Rik for this quality feedback. Seems to me you're on your way to have the NAS store the images. There are good chances that the user you used doesn't have enough rights to write on the share, in fact. I'll compile a new kernel soon, with even more NIC drivers, so maybe your Marvel cards will be soon supported. Regards Natan

In fact, to SEE the damned quicklaunch bar appear during a session, it's not enough to import the .REG file. There's a bit of black wizardry : taskkill /f /im explorer.exe explorer.exe (if you have taskkill, of course, which is part of XP Pro but not Home. Or, do it in VBS.) Natan http://updater.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

There's no problem about this. There are 2 problems here. Firstable, you said you had a dhcp server, so the PING should have been able to get an IP automatically. It asks you for an IP because it did not succeed in doing this. We must have a closer look at this. Boot the PING, then ask for a shell (X when prompted for, then login as root, no password). Then, try: 1) dmesg |grep -i eth (to make sure a ethernet card has been detected by the kernel) 2) dhcpcd (to get an IP from any available dhcp server) 3) ifconfig (the equivalent to windows' ipconfig) 1 should say something like that (YMMV): eth0: registered as PCnet/PCI II 79C970A And 3 should be explicit: eth0 Lien encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:7F:76:B2 inet adr:10.160.22.111 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Masque:255.255.254.0 adr inet6: fe80::20c:29ff:fe7f:76b2/64 Scope:Lien UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:912867 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:698305 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000 RX bytes:204812248 (195.3 MiB) TX bytes:153071356 (145.9 MiB) Interruption:10 Adresse de base:0x1080 If your ethernet card is detected, but you could get no IP from dhcp, then affecting a static IP is easy (example): ifconfig eth0 up 192.168.1.111 netmask 255.255.255.0 Then, try: ping 192.168.1.1 Secondly, as you put it, you should really not take a static IP that is already used on your network. All this seems fine. If that does not work, and you want to test, go on with the shell mentionned above. (We suppose you finally connected that eth device to the network and got an IP). You can manually mount remote Microsoft shares (btw, your W2K that shares files using MS's protocol is a SMB server... I definitely was not too clear.) Commands: smbmount //192.168.1.2/PartImage /mnt/smbfs -o username=Pedigree\\Richard (sorry, real \ needed). Good luck! Regards Natan http://updater.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://updater.windowsdream.com/why_msi.html -- Understand why installing packaged MSI is better

Works like a charm... this is a good product. In particular, nice to get ISS setups easily extracted. Go on...

Announcing: 1 new application has been added to the Updater's repository: - Free Undelete 2.0 (English) FreeUndelete is a freeware data recovery program for deleted files. In case of accidental deletion of files on a NTFS file system (used by default in Windows XP, 2000 and NT) FreeUndelete is the utility to help. See more: http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/ (All these applications can be deployed directly onto your PC through the SysAngel Updater, which you can get there: http://www.windowsdream.com. It's connected to a regularly-updated software repository, and it's free). Regards Natan http://updater.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://updater.windowsdream.com/why_msi.html -- Understand why installing packaged MSI is better

Hello... what I understand is that you want a C: with Win2K, a D: with WinXP, a clean E:, a clean F:, and no change nor on G and H (optical), nor I, J, K, L (data). Concerning 1, 2, 3 and 4: Your method is not bad. Personally, I'd prefer to boot the linux distribution, then get a shell, and do it the unix-way, since it's now possible to ntfs-format with linux. On the shell, I'd do: fdisk -l /dev/hda fdisk -l /dev/hdb fdisk -l /dev/hdc fdisk -l /dev/hdd fdisk -l /dev/sda ... because you need to identify the device of your apparently numerous hard disk drives. Assuming there's only one disk drive, and it's on hda, and we don't need to repartition, but only to format: mkntfs -Q -L Win2000 /dev/hda1 mkntfs -Q -L WinXP /dev/hda2 mkntfs -Q -L MyE /dev/hdq3 mkntfs -Q -L MyF /dev/hdq3 Concerning 5, 6 and 7: I've no remark over the installations of Windows 2k and XP. But I see you're concerned about the naming of drive units. Be aware that under XP (and normally 2k too), you can right-click My Computer, go to Manage, and change the letters of everything except systemdrive (ie. C:). You can also do it with the DOS diskpart.exe, which can be found on Windows Resource Kit (free). Hope this helps... Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Hi there! Thanks you Rik for waking me up about this topic... replies on their way. I've not been clear, my fault. SMB means Samba, and this is the unix implementation of Microsoft's proprietary sharing protocol. This means that all you have to do is right-click a folder on your Windows box, and share it. The linux-based PING will then need to know how to connect to this shared folder, which means having IP, share name, subdirectory (under the share), user name, and password. Example: if you make your share on C:\temp, call it MyTemp, and create a C:\temp\partimage\ folder, then your share is MyTemp, and path is \partimage. Well, this is Qwerty. The \ should be left the right shift key. Well, the / instead of the \ is accepted. LOL Hope these explaination will give you more success. Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Announcing: 2 new applications have been added to the Updater's repository: - Royale Theme A new theme, potentially destined for Windows XP, has leaked out of Microsoft and onto the web. The theme appears to have come out of a beta version of Media Center 2005, currently in testing. The theme is not a substantially different incarnation of the existing of Luna, the current default theme for Windows XP. You can see the main changes in the screenshots below; one could describe it as being a 'glass mod' of Luna. As Microsoft knows, it is very hard to please everyone when it comes to themes. However, I think they can be reasonably certain that most people will like this new version of Luna. Microsoft New Zealand is making available some free desktop backgrounds for use on your computer. Includes the New Zealand version of Bliss; the world-famous directional sign in Bluff; and the theme pack for Royale. Check back each month as we add more! - GXTranscoder 2.23.0 build 2863 (Lang.: EN) The GX::Transcoder is a flexible audio converter software, which is able to convert in a batch mode between a lot of audio formats. Additionally the Transcoder uses plugins to add more functions for transforming and playing audio files. The GX::Transcoder in it's standard version is able to en- and decode MP1, MP3, MP2, MPC, OGG Vorbis, PCM up to 7.1 Channel, G.721, G.723, G.726, G.729, ADPCM, GSM, VOX, DSP, VQF and RAW files as well as decoding QuickTime MOV and QT files. There are also AddIns available, which extends the Transcoder to handle the formats AAC, M4A, M4P4, LA, LPAC, WMA, TTA, OptimFrog, WavPack, FLAC, rkAudio, Real Audio, Speex, Bonk Audio and Shorten. There are plans to support even more audio formats. The transcoder also contains a video converter. This converter can transcoder between all installed avi codecs, mpeg with dvd, vcd and svs extension and wma video files. The GX::Transcoder can transfer the tags ID3v1, ID3v2, APE v1 and v2, Vorbis Comments, FLAC and WMA Tags. The GX::Transcoder is Freeware. (All these applications can be deployed directly onto your PC through the SysAngel Updater, which you can get there: http://www.windowsdream.com. It's connected to a regularly-updated software repository, and it's free). Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

Just tested, because this is a funny concept... it's working, though new Gmail anti-virus features do prevent exe files from being attached. I wouldn't rely to much on this on production, but it's fun.

MultiSet can be downloaded there: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System.../MultiSet.shtml Note that it's a shareware application, distributed as trialware. MultiSet records the actions you make when manually installing a soft, so it can reproduce it later. This might help you in some cases, but it has nothing to do with my project. With my Updater, what is installed is only MSI Packages. This means that: - they can be installed on a variety of platforms - they are really silent - you are sure to find an entry in the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel section - they have the ability to be repaired when damaged - and of course, that they are compliant to Microsoft's standard (Windows Installer service) Another interest of the Updater is that you don't have to build an installation package. The MSI packages are being done on a regular basis, and stored on a web repository for the Updater to download and install. Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Announcing: 6 new applications have been added to the Updater's repository: - AdobeReader ver. 7.0.5 (Lang.: EN) - AdobeReader Language Support ver. 7.0.5 - DVD Decrypter ver. 3.5.4.0 (Lang.: EN) (Courtesy of RoqueSpear) - FFDShow mpeg-4 video decoder ver. 20050803 (Lang.: EN) (Courtesy of RoqueSpear) - Firefox ver. 1.5 (Lang.: EN) - Virtualdub ver. 1.6.11 b23774 (Lang.: EN) (Courtesy of RoqueSpear) (All these applications can be deployed directly onto your PC through the SysAngel Updater, which you can get there: http://www.windowsdream.com. It's connected to a regularly-updated software repository, and it's free). Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

Wait... Partimage Is Not Ghost... Many people use the Windows GUI of Ghost, have a backup done out of a few clicks, and PING is probably not for them. I did not code the GUI to propose it yet, but yes, you can do it (both things), from the Bash shell. You need to know about linux, in this case. There will be a PING GUI for this in the near future. I've coded this option because there is really something wrong with Microsoft's Windows setup concerning the choice of the Windows partition. To format with NTFS, I've used new unix utilities. They make no difference between NTFS 5.0 and 5.1, as NTFS 5.1 can be read on NT4. The differences only concern the way the OS makes use of the possibilities of NTFS. This means you can format with NT4 and use with Vista, format with Vista and use with NT4. But the latest Windows version you use, the more you get from NTFS. Regards, Natan http://fr.windowsdream.com -- Mise à jour automatique de Windows avec des logiciels freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost"

Thank you. Well, I for myself prefer to keep up with usual directories, and modified the MSI accordingly.

If you're going to use TFTPD32, then any Windows version will do the trick (95/98/ME/2000/XP, in fact). There are two service components: DHCPD on one side, and TFTPD (trivial ftp) on another side. The problem is, they are linked in the boot sequence of your client. I mean, the DHCP server has the ability to tell the name of the boot file (in our case, pxelinux.0). So, if you make use of another DHCPD, the clients will not know about your TFTP server. Depending the OS running on your router, you might be able to setup a TFTPD on it. Can you tell me more about your router ? Another way could be to burn a bootable CD with PING on it. It's quite easy and the procedure tells about it. Thanks. Hope we'll be able to start a good FAQ section with your router experience Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost Hi there; let's try to debug it. Could you boot the PING, then type 'x' to get a shell, login as root, and type 'dhcpcd' ? this is supposed to get an IP. The success of the operation can be seen though the 'ifconfig' command. Can you tell me about the output ? It could also be interesting to make sure the kernel has detected your network card. You can type the 'dmesg|more' command to get some information about it. Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Any feedback out there ?

Hi RoqueSpear ! yes, I believe you're right. I've just added a possibility for people to download the soft without registering, and then fully using it with anonymous registration. I'll have to work on the website so to explain that in fact, only the email has some interest for me, as a way to get some feedback, or to announce improvements sometimes. The work is going on... By the way, I've seen the good job you've done in the field of packaging. Am I allowed to include a couple of them in my list ? Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost (Translation into English is below) Salut hfrfc ! Merci beaucoup pour tes compliments. Il y aura une version fr d'ici un mois, je pense. Le temps de repenser l'allure de l'interface graphique, un peu austère actuellement. Pour le proxy, ça a été prévu, mais pas encore documenté. Il suffit de lancer regedit.exe, et de remplir les clés HKLM\Software\Sysangel\Installer\Proxy\. A bientôt Natan //// Hi hfrfc ! Thanks for your compliments. There should be a French version in about one month. BTW, I'll rethink the GUI, which is not very beatiful presently, though working. There's a possibility to use a proxy. It has not been documented yet, in fact. Just launch regedit.exe, then feed keys in HKLM\Software\Sysangel\Installer\Proxy\. Eg.: SERVER => 192.168.0.66 PORT => 8080 USER => mydomain\myuser PASSWD => topsecret Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

I guess there is a license problem here... Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Woowww... Thank you, RogueSpear. That's really a nice job. I wish I had seen it before! Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Hi; thank you for this feedback. You're right... well, it's only new, and time has lacked. I'm not crazy about personal info, and by all means, you can fill the form with crap and yet get an id But yes, this is a serious project. I work in the field of system architectures (RIS, AD, MSI), and I find it natural to share some of the projects (like the PING, or the MSI packages themselves.) Regards Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Hi; I'm pleased to announce that an update of the Updater is ready. In fact, I'd like a few people to give it a little test... Amongst new features : - more comfort in the GUI - installation much more convenient (one stand-alone and automatic EXE, dotnet 2.0 included -- or not included if you don't need to install it) - compiled with dotnet 1.1 only, so you don't have to upgrade to 2.0 if you don't want to - a silent mode (argument: -s) to get upgrades with no questions nor GUI (but no new installation). Think of it as a 500k soft that can complete an unattended windows installation, without the need to rebuild the CD/DVD each time there's a software update. Or think of it as something small enough to stand on a CD rather than on a DVD... Natan -- to write to me: updater [at] windowsdream.com http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Hi everyone ! Thank you a lot for encouraging me, and for giving me your feedback. Bilou, you don't need to replace your own pxelinux. In fact, you just have to create a directory like D:\RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\PING\i386\templates\ and put inside : - kernel - initrd.gz - pxelnux.0 (yours is certainly ok; just need to be recent) - ping.sif In ping.sif, you might write: [OSChooser] Description = "PING" Help = "Partimage Is Not Ghost (RIP-based)" LaunchFile = "Setup\English\Images\PING\i386\templates\pxelinux.0" ImageType = Flat Version="1.01" and create a subdirectory, ...\templates\pxelinux.cfg (/!\ pxelinux.cfg is a directory) so to put inside : - default (it's the name of the file) In default, you might write : DEFAULT rescue PROMPT 0 LABEL rescue KERNEL kernel APPEND vga=normal devfs=nomount pxe ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1 init=/linuxrc prompt_ramdisk=0 initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw noapic lba acpi=off Cela devrait fonctionner... Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Yes. I'll put it all in a Word doc that will be available on the download page. Thanks you all for your feedback !

I think you've missed a point. What does Quick Batch Compiler do ? It encapsulates your batch file within an exe. Try to compile a batch file with a pause statement inside. Launch it, and look into your %temp% directory. Surprise!! the "crypted" batch file is there, called bt????.bat. If you intended to call msiexec.exe within your batch-exe file, then you've got a problem. You can call install.exe like this: cd /d my_rep\somewhere & install.exe You can also open the folder and double-click install.exe But you cannot call this way: \my_rep\somewhere\install.exe. And remember that %cd% = %temp%, thanks to the "crypt" trick. => The install procedure described in this howto is GOOD. Natan http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost