Unattended @ Sourceforge

[Tungsten]

Hello,

I just follow threads on this forum, and it's seems that nobody talk about unattended.sourceforge.net

We are using it in our company in conjunction of Disk Image software in order to make clean and uptodate image.

Yann.

[kenedy]

Can you tell more about it? Here are some questions:

1. Can it be installed on WindowsXP computer (MS RIS requires server OS)

2. Can it make floppy disk with support for network adapters that can't boot from network? Can I add more adapters?

3. What Windows versions it supports? (MS RIS - 2000, XP only).

4. Is it difficult to configure?

[XtremeMaC]

unattended.sourceforge.net was discussed earlier

I'd say its not really popular bc of the not so nice gui they have and not so nicely designed documentation.

@kenedy if u could look at that site

all your answers are waiting for u over there, its just a click away from u!

[kenedy]

XtremeMaC

I already did.

It seems that MS RIS is better after all. Is supports tools which is very nice feature. It can associate many answer files with each installation. It does not waste disk space if I have similar files.

Only possible reason to use it is additional network adapters support (manual choosing is not nice thou) and no AD, DNS and server in requirements.

Setup is launched with winnt.exe. Therefore DOS phase should be 2-3 times longer than using MS RIS. Or not?

[Alanoll]

It does not waste disk space if I have similar files.

Use CDIMAGE. Voila, not duplicate files taking up double the space.

I believe people don't use it as they don't want to learn Perl, or guess at it.....or they don't know about it....

or they prefer to do it the "pure" microsoft way. I never really liked that site, because of it's name. If they have started to call it OpenRIS from the begining and not Unattended throughout the site, I might have looked closer. The real mean different I see is the Meta tag in the unattend.txt file. That and some scripting for detecting OS and assigning product keys.

In the end, what is the real advantage to the common user for using it? Not much. For companies, there is potential....not much....but there still is some.

[Tungsten]

Well, Unattended is quite a bunch of script fo automating the creation of an unattend.txt file an run any kind of Windows 2000, XP, 2003, even on Workstation or Server.

Here's my conclusion,

-All script are made with perl (quite powerful language)

-Custom Untattend could be made (if MAC adresse = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX then computer name will be XXXXXX)

-Auto Domain/AD joining with credential erasement after installation.

-Complete Silent Applications process( even with MSI, Installshield, innosetup, etc...).

- Automatic patch installation.

What missing ? Well, maybe a nice GUI "à la" RIS wizard. The linux version of the boot disk is note quite easly customizable...

So we use it mainly for creating specifique machine configuration or Disk image original machine. So we install a complete solution in about 25 minutes....

[Alanoll]

my install completes in about 26 minutes, but it installs almost 3 gigs of software.....

Basically, this is more of a dynamic version of the static version we use here. So more appropriate to companies than individuals.

As for Automatic Patch Installation, I can do that on my own, or use XPCREATE.

As for Complete Silent Applications process, again, I can do that quite easily with a batch file or one of the other tools around.

[GreenMachine]

... What missing ? Well, maybe a nice GUI "à la" RIS wizard. The linux version of the boot disk is note quite easly customizable...

Just like the old XPCREATE, RIS has a Green User Interface?

I believe people can overcome the TUI aspect, but learning PERL is not a task for the lame, and will immediatly eliminate a great many of the "Hobbiest" users here. I also see an obstacle in the software/hardware requirements: servers, perl interpreter engines, etc.

That said, it is, of course, an admirable project, where I have looked more than once, and probably a very good alternative to the RIS method.

[Aaron]

And not forgetting the unattended guides on MSFN are targetted at home power users who at most have 1 to 3 PCs - which makes a CD-based installation more efficient than RIS or network deployment.

[Jjazz]

Hello everybody,

I really disagree. We can build easy to use unattended install with few perl knowledge.

The problem would be like that:" how could we reduce the size of a perl package like ActivePerl" in order to waste less place on the cdrom.

A more easy way is to use unix command for dos like those provided in an "unxutils" package.

By instance we could use "sed.exe" to parse some text or characters. (That could also be made with a perl script). I tried it before but "sometimes" for unclear reasons i had to handle with some unwanted dos backslash, double quote or "long pathname with blanks" effects that i was unable to resolve in an understandable manner. So i came back to perl.

If you are smart enough you can even reduce drastically the size of the ActivePerl librairies,over 4Mo. You could be able to shrunk it to less then 1Mo. The full package weighs more then 12Mo !!!

With a small .pl script of 5 lines you can by instance replace %systemdrive% by its equivalent, or add when needed double backslash in a pathname so the "registry file" stay more friendly to use and more legible when you plan to modify it.

Try ActivePerl

@+

Jj