Ghost Solution Suite

Yesterday I was working on setting up our Ghostcast server. I was able to get it so that the client would boot up (from bootdisks), I could choose my option of Ghostcast (multi, uni, direct broadacst). Once this is done, it will ask me for the session name and I can put the IP address of the server in.

Ok, so my questions are...

1) Can I automatically input the type of Ghostcast session?
2) Can I automatically input the IP address of the Ghostcast server?

I'm looking at getting a client to boot up, go directly to the Ghostcast session and start the process with as little end user (client) input at all. And this way as well, it causes less broadcast traffic on the network being that it is pointing directly to the server.

Lastly as a wandering thought.... Anyone know how I can build the boot disk to automatically ask me for a local IP address? Then the rest would be completely automated and would wait for the server to start ghosting and reboot after finishing.

(asking a lot today I know)
Thanks,
Josh

> 1) Can I automatically input the type of Ghostcast session?

On the command line, you can with "-jm=" and then M, D, or U for multicast, directed broadcast, or unicast.

2) Can I automatically input the IP address of the Ghostcast server?

Again on the command line, with "-jaddr=" and the server's IP.

Along with these two switches you also have "-ja=" as an alternate way of specifying the session name instead of the '@MC' syntax.

> And this way as well, it causes less broadcast traffic on the network being that it is pointing directly to the server.

It won't make any difference at all traffic-wise (unless your network isn't multicast-capable at all). A session discovery query still has to be sent, because in addition to the server IP the client also has to find the source port on the machine that the particular instance of GhostSrv.exe hosting the session is bound to - it's just that if you supply "-jaddr=" that query packet is sent unicast instead of multicast.

> Anyone know how I can build the boot disk to automatically ask me for a local IP address?

If you already have a favourite utility that can prompt for user input and pop it into an environment variable like SENVAR, use that and then have the batchfile output that to a WATTCP.CFG file.