PXE Ramdisk Boot With Win2003 SP1, ISO Ramdisk virtual CD Options

[DanBw]

Can anybody give a quick rundown on deploying this from a RIS server? I've already got BartPE booting from RIS but would like to try doing it as a ramdisk using this method. I currently use factory.exe from PE and would prefer to do it in the method ascribed here. Where, exactly, would I place the files in the RemoteInstall\setup\english\Images folder on the RIS server to make this work?

I've tried using this technique using the TFTP server method, but get an "ARP Timeout" error. I've tried this using two different computers..one an IBM netvista and one an HP small form factor. Both have different Nics and both give the same error message. The TFTP server log shows that it seems to be handing out an IP address..and from the PXE boot on the client machine it shows it as acquiring an address. Has anybody encountered this ARP timeout error? Googling it shows it to be a low level IP error but doesnt really shed any light on resolving it when doing the ramdisk boot.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Edit:

I attempted to place the bartpe.iso into one of my existing "template" folders on my RIS server and am now receiving an error message "bartpe.iso could not be loaded - error code 21" onscreen. any ideas from you RIS guys out there?

[PhantomofCyberne...]

Hi,

I was able to host pebuilder on tftpd. The cleint machine that i boot have 256 mb ram and by iso image is 180 mb. Some of my clients have 128mb which fail to load the complete image.

I would be trying to decrease the size of iso by removing some files.

My requirement is ghost8.2 and easy recovery pro. I would also try for erd2003.

My query is whether I can have 3 diff iso images with above applications (one iso of only ghost and other of easyrecovery) how do i setup the sif file to give me boot menu to select iso file to start.

Thanks in advance.

[mcoward]

I have been able to get Winpe to boot into RAm from a PXE server and it is working fine the problem I have is this.

My environment is quite large and I have multiple PXE servers and I would like to know which server sent the TFTP file once I am in WinPE. The reason for that is that I then need to contact that server to let it know that I no longer need to PXE boot anymore for this machine.

[mace]

usally you have the values under HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\SYSTEMSTARTOPTIONS.

With a ram-iso i don't know but if you can accept a diffrent winnt.sif on each server you can add your own data to the osloadoptins entry

This is true for MS PE but should apply to barts too

[mcoward]

usally you have the values under HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\SYSTEMSTARTOPTIONS.

With  a ram-iso i don't know but if you can accept a diffrent winnt.sif on each server you can add your own data to the osloadoptins entry

This is true for MS PE but should apply to barts too

Thanks very much for this tip, looks like I will be able to use this value to gather information.

[biscuitgod]

Hey everyone... I'm new to setting up this PXE network boot, but I seemed to have followed the instructions and ideas everyone has had in forum. I have finally gotten my network boot to work, but the transer fails when sending startrom.com.

So you all know, I have extracted all the files needed in the tftp directory from the Windows Server2003 SP1 file (startrom.com - renamed from startrom.co_, ntdetect.com, ntldr - renamed from setupldr.ex_). I then added my winpe.iso image, and the winnt.sif file.

[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=winpe.iso"

I am testing the boot process on my laptop, and when I select the network boot option I get an IP address just fine from my DHCP server, but then on the TFTP32 window, i get the following error:

Connection received from 192.168.0.152 on port 2070 [18/09 15:34:00.539]
Read request for file <startrom.com>. Mode octet [18/09 15:34:00.549]
OACK: <tsize=9133,> [18/09 15:34:00.549]
Connection received from 192.168.0.152 on port 2071 [18/09 15:34:00.560]
Read request for file <startrom.com>. Mode octet [18/09 15:34:00.560]
OACK: <blksize=1456,> [18/09 15:34:00.560]
Peer returns ERROR <TFTP Aborted> -> aborting transfer [18/09 15:34:00.570]
<startrom.com>: sent 7 blks, 9133 bytes in 0 s. 0 blk resent [18/09 15:34:00.580]

Any ideas, insite or help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks

[biscuitgod]

OK.. nevermind the above question I had... I did finally get the laptop to boot from the network and load the winpe.iso into RAM. It turns out I just copied the files from SP1 and didn't actually extract them.

However, I have one issue now. After I connect to the TFTP32 server, i get a message that states: "Press F12 for network service boot"

Is there anyway to bybass this message? I noticed a post earlier in this thread about some menu file, but it looks like it didn't pertain exactly what I am doing. I don't want a menu, but just to boot right into downloading the iso file. Is this possible??

Thanks in advance!

[biscuitgod]

Now one other problem... After the image loads into RAMDISK, and it loads, i get the STOP: 0x0000007b BSOD. I had followed the instructions that allens had posted earlier in the thread about using the ramdisk.sys from 2003 SP1, but this did not work. I think it may have something to do with the fact that he is using BartPE and I am using WindowsPE (2004, I think). The copy came with Windows SP2 cds, so i'm not sure of the version.

Anyone have any ideas? If this IS a problem with the ramdisk.sys, where do I put these files before I make the winpe.iso?

Any help would be great! Thanks

Jeff

[Macfox]

However, I have one issue now.  After I connect to the TFTP32 server, i get a message that states:  "Press F12 for network service boot"

Is there anyway to bybass this message?  I noticed a post earlier in this thread about some menu file, but it looks like it didn't pertain exactly what I am doing.  I don't want a menu, but just to boot right into downloading the iso file.  Is this possible??

Thanks in advance!

Yes use startom.n12 instead. There's two versions. One that prompts for f12 and one that doesn't.

[Macfox]

Now one other problem... After the image loads into RAMDISK, and it loads, i get the STOP:  0x0000007b BSOD.  I had followed the instructions that allens had posted earlier in the thread about using the ramdisk.sys from 2003 SP1, but this did not work.  I think it may have something to do with the fact that he is using BartPE and I am using WindowsPE (2004, I think).  The copy came with Windows SP2 cds, so i'm not sure of the version.

Anyone have any ideas?  If this IS a problem with the ramdisk.sys, where do I put these files before I make the winpe.iso?

Any help would be great!  Thanks

Jeff

Double check that you are using Win2003 sp1 ntldr and ntdetect. Also check the offset in your Winnt.sif. It's different for ISO's and SDI images.

Cut the ISO to CD and check that it works on that system. If it doesn't, then it not the PXE/RAMdisk boot process.

Rob

[biscuitgod]

Double check that you are using Win2003 sp1 ntldr and ntdetect. Also check the offset in your Winnt.sif. It's different for ISO's and SDI images.

Cut the ISO to CD and check that it works on that system. If it doesn't, then it not the PXE/RAMdisk boot process.

Rob

Rob - Thanks for the info on using the startrom.n12. I noticed it was mentioned before, but never knew why.

I know for a fact that I am using the ntldr and ntdetect from win2003 sp1. These files were extracted from the SP1 upgrade, and I put them in my tftp root folder. If that is what you are talking about. Like I stated earlier, I don't think I am using WindowsPE 2005, it may be the 2004, either way it was made with a Windows XP Pro SP2 disc.

As for my winnt.sif, it looks like this:
[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=winpe.iso"

Am I missing anything?

I will cut the image to CD tonight and try that to see if it works.. I'm sure it will tho, it's the same I used to burn to CD prior to trying the PXE booting. But I will double-check tonight and post with the update.

[biscuitgod]

OK.. First off..the startrom.n12 worked like a charm.

I noticed that I had my ramdisk.sys file (from Server SP1) in the wrong location to try to stop the BSOD. I moved it to the i386\system32\drivers folder and recreated my ISO. When I tried to load the iso from the RAMDISK this time, I did not get a BSOD! but the system did restart

I took your advice to try and burn the iso to a cd and try booting that way. This produced the same results. I am wondering if it is this ramdisk.sys file, because I've never had a problem building these cds before... I will replace the file with the original one and burn a copy of that to cd to find out if it works as normal.

[getwired]

OK.. First off..the startrom.n12 worked like a charm.

I noticed that I had my ramdisk.sys file (from Server SP1) in the wrong location to try to stop the BSOD.  I moved it to the i386\system32\drivers folder and recreated my ISO.  When I tried to load the iso from the RAMDISK this time, I did not get a BSOD!  but the system did restart 

I took your advice to try and burn the iso to a cd and try booting that way.  This produced the same results.  I am wondering if it is this ramdisk.sys file, because I've never had a problem building these cds before... I will replace the file with the original one and burn a copy of that to cd to find out if it works as normal.

All of your files must come from Windows Server 2003 SP1. That is the only version of Windows that contains all the code necessary for RAMDisk boot of WinPE to function.

[Macfox]

When I tried to load the iso from the RAMDISK this time, I did not get a BSOD!  but the system did restart 

I took your advice to try and burn the iso to a cd and try booting that way.  This produced the same results.  I am wondering if it is this ramdisk.sys file, because I've never had a problem building these cds before... I will replace the file with the original one and burn a copy of that to cd to find out if it works as normal.

did you just inject the ramdisk.sys file into an ISO or rebuild the ISO.

The restart problem is often due to a bad ISO form doing the above.

Just an idea.

Rob

[p_tippett]

Hi!

I've been setting up W2K and W2K3 RIS servers for a while but got fedup having to setup and configure DNS, DHCP, AD, etc so decided to try out alternatives that could run from any Windows platform.

I have followed the instructions by Macfox and the ideas everyone else has had in this forum. I have managed to get my clients to boot and connect to the TFTP server (using TFTP32 by PH.Jouin) however I have two problems:

If I set the "option negotiation" in the TFTP32 server my clients fail to boot and I get the following error on the TFTP server:

"Unexpected request 4 from peer"
"Returning EBADOP to peer"

and eventually see the "TFTP illegal operation" error message on the PXE client

OR

if I select "PXE compatability" in the TFTP32 server I can successfully boot from the PXE client but I seem to get the BOOTFONT.BIN error message on the TFTP server and the "NTDETECT failed" on the PXE client.

Procedures I tested - I extracted all the files needed in the tftp directory from the Windows Server2003 SP1 or Windows server 2003 Enterprise R2 files (which contain SP1), (startrom.com - renamed from startrom.co_ I also renamed to startrom.n12 and startrom.0 - both of which give me the NTDETECT failed error message, ntdetect.com, ntldr - renamed from setupldr.ex_). I then added my winpe.iso image, and the winnt.sif file.

[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=winpe.iso"

Any ideas, insite or help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks

[dfenwick]

Last night I went through this setup in order to build a PXE bootable BartPE. Here are my notes, for consolidation since it took me a while to wade through everything.

Configuration:

TFTP server - Fedora Core 4 standard tftp server v 0.40-6
DHCP server - Fedora Core 4 standard DHCP server (ISC DHCP v 3.0.2-34

NOTE: I have some extra stuff in my dhcpd.conf that is completely unnecessary for a standard installation. I've included it all just for documentation purposes. Your scopes will vary based on your IP addresses, but the main gist of it is to add the PXE stuff. I also have some group inclusions in order to deal with both PXE boots and non-PXE boots. The PXE stuff was lifted from this site. I'd love to take credit for it, but I can't.

/etc/dhcpd.conf

CODE

ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;

option space PXE;
option PXE.mtftp-ip               code 1 = ip-address;
option PXE.mtftp-cport            code 2 = unsigned integer 16;
option PXE.mtftp-sport            code 3 = unsigned integer 16;
option PXE.mtftp-tmout            code 4 = unsigned integer 8;
option PXE.mtftp-delay            code 5 = unsigned integer 8;
option PXE.discovery-control      code 6 = unsigned integer 8;
option PXE.discovery-mcast-addr   code 7 = ip-address;

subnet 198.202.195.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

    option routers          198.202.195.253;
    option subnet-mask      255.255.255.0;
    option broadcast-address    198.202.195.255;

    option nis-domain       "assetsw.com";
    option domain-name      "assetsw.com";
    option domain-name-servers  198.202.195.70;

    option time-offset      -18000; # Eastern Standard Time
    option ntp-servers      198.202.195.60;
    option netbios-name-servers 198.202.195.70;

    range dynamic-bootp 198.202.195.150 198.202.195.200;
    default-lease-time 21600;
    max-lease-time 43200;

    host sniffles {
        hardware ethernet 00:04:23:47:23:8D;
        fixed-address 198.202.195.85;
    }
}

class "pxeclients" {
    match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient";
    option vendor-class-identifier "PXEClient";
    vendor-option-space PXE;

    # At least one of the vendor-specific PXE options must be set in
    # order for the client boot ROMs to realize that we are a PXE-compliant
    # server.  We set the MCAST IP address to 0.0.0.0 to tell the boot ROM
    # that we can't provide multicast TFTP (address 0.0.0.0 means no
    # address).

    option PXE.mtftp-ip 0.0.0.0;

    # This is the name of the file the boot ROMs should download.
    filename "/startrom.n12";

    # This is the name of the server they should get it from.
    next-server 198.202.195.60;
}

group {
    use-host-decl-names on;
    option log-servers  198.202.195.70;

    host snifflesvm.assetsw.com {
        hardware ethernet   00:0C:29:B6:E2:49;
#       hardware ethernet   00:0C:29:EA:B6:E5;
        fixed-address       198.202.195.86;
        ddns-hostname       "snifflesvm.assetsw.com";
        ddns-domainname     "assetsw.com";
    }
}

allow unknown-clients;

The only modification for the tftp server is to edit /etc/xinetd.d/dhcp and set disable = no.

Started with the basic information from the original poster. I copied my Windows 2003 RC2 server disk over to my local drive, then slipstreamed in the SP1 update. Then I configured PE Builder to build from that installation. PE Builder failed on the first run, but that was because my custom drivers for my RAID card were in subdirectories from the txtsetup.oem file, and PE Builder didn't like that. The 2nd failure was because PE Builder can't write an ISO to the root directory of a drive for some reason.

After getting my ISO built, I then followed the procedures from the original poster.

Note: These were all modified after the first failures. See notes below...

Copy startrom.com to /tftpboot/startrom.com
Copy setupldr.exe to /tftpboot/ntldr
Copy NTDETECT.COM to /tftpboot/NTDETECT.COM
Copy bartpe.iso to /tftpboot/bartpe.iso

Setup the winnt.sif file as specified by the original poster. Make absolutely sure that it's in DOS format and not Unix format for line breaks. Run this against it:

dos2unix /tftpboot/winnt.sif

I started with startrom.com, but for whatever reason after loading startrom.com, the install would freeze immediately after loading it. I then fell back on startrom.n12 (which I wanted anyway) and that worked fine, but when it tried to pull in ntldr, it wanted it in capital letters (Linux/Windows difference I suppose - I watched the request with ethereal.) So I renamed ntldr to NTLDR and started again. This time the failure (post loading NTLDR) said Error in NTDETECT.COM. Again, watching it in ethereal, it was requesting ntdetect.com and not NTDETECT.COM. So I renamed NTDETECT.COM to ntdetect.com, restarted, and ntdetect started properly. However, then it said it couldn't find BARTPE.ISO. Yet another rename from bartpe.iso to BARTPE.ISO, and it started perfectly, booted into BartPE, and everything works great.

So you should have the following files in your /tftpboot directory with specific regard to case sensitivity when using standard Linux services:

BARTPE.ISO (or whatever you named it in winnt.sif - just make sure it's all caps)
ntdetect.com
NTLDR
startrom.n12
winnt.sif

I'm now adding all of the stuff I need to automate the entire network startup process without having to click any buttons and only having to type a single password for mounting a disk drive. That's pretty much done at this point. My objective is to perform a complete remote installation using all non-Microsoft services and allowing for multiple (possibly hundreds) of client computers to perform their remote install. I'm working on the ability to load a specific winnt.sif file for the operating system based on the MAC address of the machine making the request. I've already got a lot of that scripting done.

Anyway, I figured I'd post this, since I haven't seen a complete non-Microsoft tftp/dhcp configuration posted yet. Hopefully someone can use this.

[dog]

For non-ms tftp/dhcp but still windows based, you can use tftpd32/syslinux:
http://xpe.collewijn.info/page/tftpd_ris.php
But this is the WinPE forum, WinPE purists probably use ms tools instead

[jaclaz]

And another thing (again not for MS WinPE "purists") worth a look is this one:
http://winner.windowsdream.com/
WINNER (Windows Is Not Necessary for Everyone's RIS)

jaclaz

[hj_fr]

Somebody already tested bartpe with ramdisk with the fresh 2003 SP2 ? (diskpart SP1 issue, etc)

[tipalm]

I saw a good tip mentioned earlier to an issue that held me back a bit initially. Normally when you pull the files from the W2k3Server SP1 they are not "expanded". For example you get startrom.ex_, it is not enough to rename them they must be expanded.

I did ">expand startrom.co_ startrom.com" . Make sure they are ALL W2k3Server SP1 files, and for the ramdisk I needed ramdisk.inf and ramdisk.sys in the tftp root as well.

System: w2k3 SP1 server , pxe ramdisk boot winpe 2005 image made from w2k3 Server SP1 OS installation . DCHP and TFTP32.

This post has been edited by tipalm: Aug 1 2007, 12:52 PM