Ghost Solution Suite

I've been trying to do this for the better part of two days and all I seem to be accomplishing is wasting bandwidth.

I am using Ghost Cast Server as a part of GSS Version 1 (I know, I know) and a bootable floppy disk using a USB floppy drive to boot each machine into the Ghostcast session. I adapted the logon script to automatically connect to the session using the clone switches, but I cannot get ghost walker to automatically launch after the ghost cloning process is complete.

If I enter the following in the batch file:

net use y: \\imgsrv\newghost
net use z: \\imgsrv\ghost
y:
ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=@mcClonePC,dst=1 -sure
ghstwalk.exe -sure

After the new machine is cloned I am returned to DOS and I see "Bad Command or File Name". I can enter the last line of code and ghost walker will start up, run, and complete without any more intervention.

If I enter the following in the batch file:

net use y: \\imgsrv\newghost
net use z: \\imgsrv\ghost
y:
ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=@mcClonePC,dst=1 -sure
ghstwalk.exe

After the new machine is cloned, ghost walker starts up, but requires the end user to press Enter a few times to accept the defaults and start creating the new SID.

Why will ghost walker fail when using switches in the batch file? What am I doing wrong? Is there a workaround (such as calling yet another batch file which will just launch ghost walker)?

Thanks.

As you are getting "Bad command or filename" on the first example, try specifying the full path to GhostWalker.

I just tried your suggestion, and unfortunately it did not resolve the problem.

Thanks.

We are not using Ghost32.exe we instead use the DOS version Ghost.exe

On some prior google searches your suggestion did come up a few times so I see how that would work. I'm not exactly ready to completely overhaul our process at this point. Thank you though.

I'm starting to feel that this won't be able to be done, and that is fine.

Try putting in a delay between the Ghost and GhostWalker calls - you can use ping to do this (google on the exact switches as I cannot recall them).

Well, I have to do some testing but I did get it to work. I put in a delay by doing a ping after the ghost command, but I also have the original batch file calling a second batch file after the ghost command.

Once I find out exactly what resolved the issue, I'll report back. In the meantime, thanks for all your help.

I suspect it is a timing issue. It may well be that the Ghost program is taking a while to release the volume after it "closes" the primary window and therefore Ghostwalker is starting before the volume is released fully and thus cannot access it. By adding in a minor delay in the process steps it is now working.

DOS runs extremely fast on a modern system so these timing issues become more commonplace.

I did some tests, and it was due to a timing issue, which the ping command effectively negated.

Thanks for your help, EdT. I owe you a beverage of your choice if we ever cross paths in the real world.

Maybe VMWare will release a Virtualised bar one day!!