Creating a Network Driver source for RIS

[Steve.mccall]

Hi,

Is this at all possible. I work for a company that has a number of different hardware configurations and would like to have a single source that setup can search during the RIS install. Is there any way at all I can do this?

Steve

[RogueSpear]

If you use the DriverPacks with my utility AutoImage, I think you'll get what you're looking for.

[Steve.mccall]

I'm afraid I'm only able to use the Windows tools (as bad as they are) availiable to me. Is there any other way of doing it?

Steve

[Jopster]

As far as I know, it's not possible. RIS looks for the drivers in the I386 directory of the image that is being loaded at that time.

It would be handy though. Saves a lot of time if you have many different nic drivers.

I have to manually add new drivers to 22 images. Hell of a job, but I'm used to it now I guess.

[RogueSpear]

Actually RIS does not look to the network for drivers during at the T-39 stage of setup because the network is not yet available. All of the drivers that you need must be on the hard drive during setup.

[Jopster]

True. A bit of a misunderstanding from my side I think. I thought he meant a central network driver source for the loading of the configuration set/image which does look for the drivers in the I386 directory.

I must be getting old or need a vacation.

[Steve.mccall]

Actually RIS does not look to the network for drivers during at the T-39 stage of setup because the network is not yet available. All of the drivers that you need must be on the hard drive during setup.

Would it be possible to configure each image with it's appropriate network driver for the text based part of setup and then access the network store to load the pnp drivers?

Steve

[RogueSpear]

Would it be possible to configure each image with it's appropriate network driver for the text based part of setup and then access the network store to load the pnp drivers?

Well you need the text mode network drivers just to do a RIS install at all. But the text mode drivers are entirely different than the drivers for PnP enumeration. The text mode drivers are simply to connect to the RIS server via TFTP to download the image. During PnP enumeration, the network drivers are installed to the operating system.

So the short answer is no, you cannot do it that way.

I've found the easiest method of incorporating drivers into your RIS install is to do a method 2 integration using Bashrat the Sneaky's DriverPacks. This can be a little bit tricky to do for someone new to the DriverPacks let alone someone new to RIS. And it was also one of the inspirations behind my making AutoRIS and later, AutoImage.

If you were to do a method 1 integration, which more follows Microsoft's prescribed practices, you will run into a couple of issues. First you'll end up copying down an extra 6,000 or so files with each RIS client install. Second is that if you find that you need to use all of the DriverPacks, or even some of them but with the addition of some third party DriverPacks, you'll overextend the path limit of 4096 characters imposed by OemPnPDriversPath in your .SIF file.