While working at IBM I wrote an article about how to install Windows Server 2008 using xCAT.\u00a0 The cool thing about this procedure is that you’re using Linux to provision a Windows machine, using the native Windows installer.\u00a0 This isn’t like the other solutions where they just do something like partimage.\u00a0 We think this still has a lot more cool stuff that can be done and from Sumavi’s perspective (my company) its just the beginning of what we’re going to be doing with Windows provisioning.<\/p>\n
There are some common pitfalls to doing windows installations with xCAT.\u00a0 Here they are:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Is Samba enabled?\u00a0 This seems to be the biggest issue that I always forget.\u00a0 You’ll know if this is your problem and it boots all the way to the command prompt and then reboots.\u00a0 My Samba configuration looks like this:<\/p>\n
\/etc\/samba\/smb.conf<\/p>\n
[global]\r\n\u00a0workgroup = MYGROUP\r\n\u00a0server string = Samba Server Version %v\r\n\u00a0security = shared\r\n\u00a0passdb backend = tdbsam\r\n\u00a0load printers = yes\r\n\u00a0cups options = raw\r\n[install]\r\n\u00a0path = \/install\r\n\u00a0public = yes\r\n\u00a0writable = no<\/pre>\nOnce that’s up restart it and make sure it comes back up on boot:<\/p>\n
service smb start\r\nchkconfig --add smb\r\n<\/pre>\n2. Do you have the drivers in your base WinPE image?<\/p>\n
This is the hardest part.\u00a0 If Samba is up and you don’t have the drivers then you need to add them to your base WinPE image.\u00a0 I hope to write more on this later, but this is generally the big problem I run into.<\/p>\n
3. Do you have drivers in your \/install\/drivers directory?<\/p>\n
If the machine installs and then reboots fine, but then errors out its because it can’t find the boot directory.\u00a0 These drivers in \/install\/drivers are for the reboot and the script adds them in.<\/p>\n
Usually once you get past these issues you can install Windows pretty easily.\u00a0 I hope to write another article on how to do this with the latest updates.\u00a0 Since I left IBM that document has been removed, so if you have troubles either post to the xCAT mailing list or drop me an email and I’ll be glad to see if I can help.\u00a0 We’re trying to make this easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While working at IBM I wrote an article about how to install Windows Server 2008 using xCAT.\u00a0 The cool thing about this procedure is that you’re using Linux to provision a Windows machine, using the native Windows installer.\u00a0 This isn’t like the other solutions where they just do something like partimage.\u00a0 We think this still…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2816,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/2816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}