Ris Server

Using Linux to install Windows XP with Network booting

1E Technical Whitepaper

OSD and LinuxAbstract

This paper discusses how to network-install Windows XP using a Linux server.


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Contents Page i

Introduction 1 Contents Architecture 1 Prerequisites 1 Configuring Linux 2 Installing Linux Packages 2 RIS-Linux 2 Configuring DHCP 2 Configuring TFTP 3 The Boot Files 3 Configuring Samba 4 Copying the WinPE Files 4 Copying the Package Files 4 Starting the BINL Server 4 Network Booting the Client PC 6 Selecting the Operating System Package 6 Summary 8 Acknowledgements 8 Information 9 Pricing and packaging information 9 More information 9


Introduction Page 1

Introduction This paper shows you how you can use a Linux based infrastructure to deploy Windows XP images to machines on your network. This section gives a brief overview of the architecture that will be used to achieve the deployment and a list of the prerequisites for following the procedure.

Architecture To install Windows XP over the network requires the following components:

• A DHCP server that supports PXE options.

• A Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server.

• A Boot Information Negotiation Layer (BINL) server.

• A CIFS/SMB server.

Prerequisites • A Windows XP CD. I used Service Pack 2.

• A WinPE boot CD created using the SMS Operation System Deployment feature pack (OSD).

• You will also need two computers: one server and one client.


Configuring Linux Page 2

Installing Linux Packages Configuring Linux In this paper, we describe using a Debian GNU/Linux box as the server. Other variants of Linux or Unix will work as well, but you should bear in mind that installation details will vary.

We start by taking one of our lab machines, LAB2-17, and installing a copy of Debian on it. We will install the “sarge” (testing) distribution of Debian.

First we need to install some extra packages:

# apt-get install tftpd-hpa # apt-get install dhcp3-server # apt-get install samba # apt-get install cabextract # apt-get install syslinux # apt-get install wget

We might also want some other packages for debugging:

# apt-get install tftp-hpa # apt-get install ethereal # apt-get install smbclient

RIS-Linux In order to make this work properly, you will also need the files from http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/ris-linux.tar.gz

Most importantly, this includes a BINL server, implemented in Python.

# cd # wget http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/ris-linux.tar.gz # tar xvfz ris-linux.tar.gz # cp –a ris-linux/* /usr/local/bin

This leaves the scripts in /usr/local/bin, which should be in your $PATH variable.

Configuring DHCP On Debian, the DHCP server configuration is held in /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf. Our example looks like this:

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.200; option broadcast-address 192.168.0.255; option routers 192.168.0.17; option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.17; option domain-name "lab2.local"; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; allow bootp; host lab2-18 { hardware ethernet 00:01:02:03:04:05; fixed-address 192.168.0.18; server-name “192.168.0.17”; next-server 192.168.0.17; filename “startrom.0”; } }

We have one server, called lab2-17, IP address 192.168.0.17; and one client, called lab2-18, IP address 192.168.0.18.

Items of note are the “allow bootp” line, the “server-name” and “next-server” entries, and the “filename” entry. The server-name and filename entries tell the PXE client where to find the TFTP server, and which file to request from it.


http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/ris-linux.tar.gz


Configuring TFTP For a TFTP server, we will be using the tftpd-hpa package, which has some useful extensions for booting PXE clients. Configuration is held in /etc/default/tftpd-hpa:

RUN_DAEMON="yes" OPTIONS="-l -s /tftpboot -m /etc/tftpd-hpa.rules -vvv"

The first line is necessary because we will run TFTPD as a daemon, rather than from inetd.

The second line tells it to run in listen mode, rooted at /tftpboot, using the given rules file, and it should be verbose in logging.

The rules file, at /etc/tftpd-hpa.rules, looks like this:

rg \\ /

This allows it to handle Windows clients, which use backslash as a path separator, by replacing this with a forward slash.

The Boot Files We need some files from a stock Windows XP distribution. To get hold of these, it is simplest to mount the Windows XP CD.

# mkdir /tftpboot # cd /tftpboot # mount /media/cdrom # cabextract /media/cdrom/I386/STARTROM.N1_ # ln –sf startrom.n12 startrom.0

This leaves us with a startrom.0 symlink pointing at the startrom.n12 file that we just extracted from the XP CD.

We need the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files as well:

# cp /media/cdrom/I386/SETUPLDR.BIN /tftpboot/ntldr # fixloader.py /tftpboot/ntldr # cp /media/cdrom/I386/NTDETECT.COM /tftpboot/ntdetect.com

The fixloader.py script strips off the header from NTLDR, leaving a normal EXE file.

Note: the destination files should be in lower-case.

We are done with the Windows XP CD now:

# umount /media/cdrom

At this point, you should be able to network-boot the workstation, but it will fail with a “Cannot find WINNT.SIF” error. Create /tftpboot/winnt.sif, containing the following:

[SetupData] OsLoadOptions = “/fastdetect /minint” SetupSourceDevice = “\Device\LanmanRedirector\server\share\path” [UserData] ComputerName = WindowsPE

In the SetupSourceDevice line, be sure to specify the server name, share name and path name. For example:

SetupSourceDevice = “\Device\LanmanRedirector\lab2-17\RemInst\winpe”



Configuring Samba The Samba configuration file is in /etc/samba/smb.conf. It will need to look something like this:

[global] oplocks = false level2 oplocks = false encrypt passwords = true passdb backend = tdbsam guest obey pam restrictions = yes guest account = nobody invalid users = root socket options = TCP_NODELAY null passwords = true [RemInst] path = /tftpboot browsable = true read only = Yes guest ok = Yes [images] path = /images browsable = true read only = Yes guest ok = Yes Note: The “oplocks” and “level2 oplocks” lines fix a problem that often occurs with Samba in Debian/sarge and Windows XP.

You will need the “null passwords” line.

The configuration file then sets up two shares, RemInst and images.

We also need to add a user account, used for the images share:

# adduser osduser # smbpasswd –a osduser

You will be prompted for a password on both occasions.

Copying the WinPE Files Mount the Windows PE CD that you created with OSD, and copy the files from it:

# mkdir /tftpboot/winpe # cp –a /media/cdrom/* /tftpboot/winpe

Copying the Package Files When you created the package using OSD, you will have ended up with a package folder on your distribution point. Copy this to the Linux box. In this example, it is placed in /images/LB200043.

Starting the BINL Server This uses the BINL server found in the ris-linux.tar.gz file. First you need to fix the case of some of the files in the OSD image. Edit the /usr/local/bin/fixup-repository.sh and point the REP variable at /tftpboot/winpe. Then run it.

# fixup-repository.sh



Then we need to generate a driver database. This is equivalent to the .PNF files that RIS uses. Unfortunately, as it stands, the script does not correctly deal with newer, IA64-enabled drivers. We need to make a couple of changes. There are two lines in the file that look like this:

if check[-1].startswith(‘nt’):

They need to read like this.

if check[-1].startswith(‘ntx86’):

Then run it:

# cd /usr/local/bin # ./infparser.py /tftpboot/winpe/i386/inf

With the OSD image we used in the example, the result of running the command was: “Compiled 733 drivers”.

Now you can run the BINL server:

# /usr/local/bin/binlsrv.py


Network Booting the Client PC Page 6

Network Booting the Client PC

After the preceding steps, If you now turn on the client PC and select network booting, you should see (after a short while) the OSD installation wizard:

Selecting the Operating System Package If you click Next, you will be given a list of available packages. These are taken from the RIPINFO.INI file. Our example does not have an SMS management point, so we need to choose the “from another location” option:


Network Booting the Client PC Page 7

At this point, we need to point the wizard at our images share:

And, once we have selected a configuration from the drop-down list, it will do a bare metal installation of the chosen operating system.


Summary Page 8

Summary This paper showed how you can deploy OSD-built XP images using a common variety of Linux, combining the technologies of DHCP, PXE, TFTP, BINL and SMB to provide a means of deploying Windows OS without requiring a Windows infrastructure.

Acknowledgements This paper would have been impossible to write without the information at http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/pxe.php


http://oss.netfarm.it/guides/pxe.php

Information Page 9

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