Windows Server 2008 Core RC1

[dexter.inside]

This week I am making a comparative scenario using 4 vLited images: Ultimate RTM (6000.16386), Ultimate SP1 RC1 (6001.17052), Enterprise RC1 (6001.17051) and Enterprise Core RC1 (6001.17051).

My intention is to obtain a minimal Core installation of Server 2008 RC1 onto which I will add Vista Ultimate components (either manually, or using my app).

It will be useful if somebody could confirm this way that vLite is removing all the files from the Server platform. You can browse my SVN to see the latest versions of reg files.

Note for testers: At the moment there are 3 ways of using these reg files:

1) offline sources

- mount the WIM as RW before creating the ISO and load COMPONENTS and SOFTWARE hives in HKEY_USERS.

- apply the reg file (* - Add.reg or * - Remove.reg)

- add or delete files in the *.txt file (manually or through batch scripting)

- unload the hives

- /unmount /commit the WIM

- create the ISO and install it

or 2) offline virtual disk

- mount a virtual disk containing the installation and load COMPONENTS and SOFTWARE in HKEY_USERS.

- apply the reg file (* - Add.reg or * - Remove.reg)

- add or delete files in the *.txt file (manually or through batch scripting)

- unload the hives

- dismount the virtual disk

- boot

or 3) hot-add

- replace HKEY_USERS with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in * - Add.reg

- add the files through administrative shares in their proper locations (\\machinename\C$)

- apply the reg file in that machine

I will post screenshots with this procedure. Hopefully, it should solve vLite compatibility issues with the server platform.

Edit: Quick delete method for file list: for /f %i in (foo.txt) do del "mountpath%i" /s /q

where foo.txt is list of files from component and mountpath is where you mounted the WIM / disk

Hint: If you are doing this on Core, also remove *.log? , *.TM.blf and *.regtrans-ms from \WINDOWS\System32\config to save ~35 MB of space.

Edited December 26, 2007 by dexter.inside

[dexter.inside]

I have removed Languages from Server 2008 Core RC1 with vLite 1.1 RC and install.wim size is now down to ~190 MB.

There are 30 components left in vLite (34 total with Languages). I've checked this way that my method does not break vLite compatibility.

Installed in 6 minutes (VMware Workstation 6.0.2, 768 MB allocated memory, RAID-0, 2 CPUs @ 2100 Mhz).

After installation, I reduced memory to 192 MB, out of which is now using 134.

Edited December 26, 2007 by dexter.inside

[dexter.inside]

The Enterprise Server - Core I have used before comes from diffing for unique items between Core and non-Core Server 2008 EE. What can be seen in registry here is most likely common for both.

Let's have a look - from a quick search, I discover "Microsoft Windows Server Core Package" and dependencies in CBS. By analysing each entry here, my 'Enterprise Server - Core" (supernode) can be split in several smaller components (nodes) for each type of functionality.

It is difficult to do this:

So I have to revert to the registry in install.wim to continue this.

As expected, oclist.exe is not available because it was removed by Enterprise Server - Core package. I will add it in a separate component, for analysis purposes.

This shows the exact packages that are to be made by splitting the Enterprise Server - Core.

Edited December 26, 2007 by dexter.inside

[aviv00]

btw how much space its takes?

and when u say vLite compatibility u mean the feathers add-on thing ?

[dexter.inside]

btw how much space its takes?

Installed 1.03 GB without pagefile and hibernation.

vLite compatibility means that you will still be able to run vLite on that image after you removed stuff with my list of files.