Ghost Solution Suite

Hi Doug

Ghost Console is the integrated cloning, application deployment, inventory (etc, etc) management platform.

In your post, where you refer to Ghost Console, I think you really mean to say you are using Ghost.exe. Ghost .exe is a standalone cloning tool independent of the management platform. The confusion is understandable.

There are a few different ways you can capture and restore images. For instance, you could use the management platform and use the remote client install tool to install a Ghost Management Console Client into a running operating system, then initiate all tasks from the management platform. All the pre-os stuff is taken care of automatically.

Separately, I'd guess you have already created a boot environment using Ghost Boot Wizard and assigned this to the PXE server. One approach is to start a GhostSrv.exe on session on the server in image create or image restore mode, then after booting from PXE, select GhostCast then multicast or unicast from the Ghost.exe menu, and connect to that session to perform your operation. Try that. It's powerful stuff, and you can drive it all from the command line.

But, if you have already chosen the mapped drives method, you will probably want to use the drive mapping boot package from Ghost Boot Wizard. You can use the supplied 3Com utilities to convert this to a network bootable image. Some extra notes on that. Because this package maps drives, it includes a windows network client. By default the temporary computer name to use on the windows network is specified inside the boot package - which is a bit of a pain if you want to boot it from multiple computers at the same time. After you have got the boot package working to your satisfaction, you can use the 3Com BootPPatch utility to insert a temporary unique computer name at run time. Details for that utility are in a file called Dosutils.txt in the 3Com installation directory.

-Xan

Message Edited by Xan Todd on 07-05-200711:26 AM

Message Edited by Xan Todd on 07-05-200711:36 AM

I can be a bit more specific. After converting the mapped network drives boot package to a network boot image, use the 3Com Boot Image Editor to add BPPATCH.exe to the root of the network boot image and add this line to the autoexec.bat before the network initialization stuff:

BPPATCH \net\system.ini

Then, replace the computername line of the \net\system.ini file with this:

computername=#@cha############

This causes a temporary computer name to be set using the name field of the BootPTab PXE host control file. If you are using a wildcard, in your host control file, you will need to consider using a different method.

Also I forgot to mention, in GSS2.0 you can also drive Ghost Management Console tasks from the commandline as well.

Conversion from floppy is easier. Use the Ghost Boot Wizard to create a "Drive Mapping Boot Package" floppy (without ghost.exe), then use the 3Com Boot Image Editor and choose Create a TCP/IP or PXE image file, and select the source floppy drive. After that's complete, use the Edit an Existing File option to add Ghost.exe, and edit autoexec.bat.

If you are just booting one computer at a time, you won't need to worry about assigning a temporary computer name.

If you do need to boot multiple computers at the same time with this package, you'll need to assign a temporary computer name at run time. There isn't something ready made there, so I'd suggest using the ip address parameter as a temporary name. I'd guess you will probably need to use a 3rd party utility (something like grep) to strip the dots out.

O.k, that looks pretty good. Let's drop in a pause after each of these lines, to make sure the network is starting correctly, and to view any authentication output:

\NET\NET START
pause
\NET\NET.EXE USE H: \\carhsfxpxe\Images
pause
\NET\NET.EXE USE
pause

I'm not sure I understand the last paragraph - "The only way I could get the client on one subnet to see the pxe server on the other subnet was to configure port 67 on dhcp and supply the mba.pxe boot menu file, otherwise pxe boot failed."

Could you provide more detail there?

Thanks,
Xan

I'd expect drive mapping across a subnet will work correctly.

It is possible the host name is not being resolved on the network for some reason. If this is the case, it should be possible to resolve the name statically by creating or editing the LMHOSTS file in the \NET directory of your boot environment to include an entry like:

10.166.2.90   MyServerName

Message Edited by Xan Todd on 07-16-200703:51 PM

Regarding the 3Com PXE boot side of things, starting from the simplest, you could install the PXE server on the DHCP server.

Alternatively, using your existing PXE server, you could install an additional network card configured for that subnet.

If these are both out of the question, there are also some router and NIC configuration options available which should do the trick. I'll discuss these with my colleagues and get back to you.

Message Edited by Xan Todd on 07-16-200703:47 PM

No problem. I think you have already implemented the router configuration I had in mind.

What if I don't have a floppy drive to do this?  How would I convert the mapped drive image from .iso to something I can use?

This is not something I've tried here, but I'd guess you could use Ghost Boot Wizard to create a 3Com TCP/IP Network Boot Image then copy all files from the iso into that boot image. Alternatively, instead of creating an iso, you could use the Format Disk option of the Ghost Boot Wizard to write the files to a USB flash drive, and copy them to the 3Com TCP/IP Network Boot Image from there (using a 3Com utility described earlier in this thread).

These conversion methods are not something I've tried, so there may be some additional tweaking of the procedure required.

One alternative to this approach would be the use of a 3rd party virtual floppy drive application.

Message Edited by Xan Todd on 08-03-200702:43 PM

Doug, Did you ever get past the Error 53?  I am having sort of the same issue.  I have one mapped drive going to a Windows 2000 file share, and I want to map a second drive to a windows 2003 file share (we are migrating to a new server, and want to have access to both).  I have DOS running off a USB stick that I boot to.  DOS maps the Z: to \\win2000\ghost fine, but wont map Y: to \\win2003\ghost.  the file permissions and share permissions on both shares are the same, and the account used to access it is a domain admin account.
This discussion has been the closest to my issue that I have been able to find, and being only 1/2 a month old, I hope that I can get some quick answers. 
Thanks a lot for your help Doug, or anyone else that might be able to help.
Ray

The windows network client used in the drive mapping boot disk operates with LM authentication only.

Windows 2003 Server authentication level is "Send NTLM response only" by default.

This can be changed if desired via Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level.

Microsoft has a longer article explaining more about this setting here.

Thanks,
Xan

The change needs to be made only on the machine where your images are stored - the target of the mapped network drive.

Xan, we changed the security setting on our Windows 2003 Standard Edition SP2 member server, but it still tells us the samething, Error 53 and won't let us connect to the fileshare.  We have "Network security: LAN Manager Authentication level" set to "Send LM & NTLM responses".

Is there anything else we need to check out and change?
Thanks,
Ray

Message Edited by midwestheart on 08-21-200701:46 PM

Thanks, using this thread has allowed me to create a network boot pxe setup that allows me to do my imaging.  Now Ive got to work on the computer naming so that I can have more than 1 pc running at a time.