Remote boot via PXE (virtual machines)

Hi men,

today I was triyng to remote boot, but unsuccessfully.

Using Virtual PC 2007 machines, on the client I put the first boot device as the network card equipped with PXE boot ROM and setup a Server 2003 with AD+DNS+DHCP+RIS.
On RIS I uploaded an image of Windows XP Professional.

Started the client machine but nothing happened. Tried much times.

Also attached to the network some other machines with yet an O.S. installed and those taken perfectly its IP addresses.

Someone has experience to this or any advice?

I had this article as reference (I have not read everything, it's very long).

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rjbarlow

News,

If I put my Virtual machine without O.S. in my real LAN network, I get an error like:
- No DHCP server found
That's OK, because no DHCP server is in my LAN.

If I put that with the network card in "Just local" connection, that means just communication within virtual machines I get:
- No boot filename received

Then I think it gets its IP address correctly, but still remote installation don't works.

Someone has tried this before and solved it?

Thank You.

Sie

Hi RJBarlow sorry for the delay in replying, I have only just seen your post.

I have set this up before and its working fine.

Steps I would follow:

- Create Server VM - ensure network settings are set to local and create second VHDD for RIS Partition
- Install Windows 2003 Server
- Setup Windows 2003 Server as DC, use the first server role option when doing this and it will install DNS, DHCP along with AD for you.
- Install RIS via Add/Remove Programs
- Setup RIS (run risetup from Start > Run)
- Install XP image on RIS
- Ensure permissions are setup correctly on RIS folder
- Authourise RIS Server in AD
- Create Network Client VM - ensure network settings are set to local
- Boot Network Client VM (Some BIOS require you to press F12 for network boot)

The only other option I can think of you need to ensure is turned on the is RIS option: Respond to clients requesting service

Hope this helps, if you need a more detailed plan let me know and I will try and get something written up for you.

[Edit

Find this MSKB on installing RIS, sorry if its telling you how to suck eggs but thought it may help you out:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298750

/Edit]

rjbarlow

Hi sie,

I solved with this:

- Ensure permissions are setup correctly on RIS folder

I started to assign to everyone full control on the Remoteinstall folder and installation worked magically, then I suppose that it's not the best way to share that folder and discovered that just the OSChooser subfolder need to have more large permissions and it still works fine.

Thank You very much.

Sie

No problems,

You can assign the permssions appropriatly and lock down the clients that are able to install using the machine GUID but to be honest it can be a pain in the a$$ to do.

Glad you got it sorted.

J-Dubs

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but in the exercise for setting up RIS, didn't the book say to set up your user in A/D to process batch jobs to get RIS to work?

rjbarlow

You're right, but in my case I had assigned previously that user right, so of course the isue was related to ntfs pemissions.