[wpkg-users] remotely installing Vista from Linux

[Florian Effenberger]

Hello Tomasz, Hello Rainer,

as usual, thanks for your fast reply!

I've had great success with the BINL server by Gianluigi and his work
is just great. We used to use Unattended for Windows setup, but always
had issues with kernels not supporting hardware, and then we
eventually moved to the "native" installation via PXEBOOT and BINL
which works perfect.

Unfortunately, I'm no programmer, so I won't be of much help when it
comes to debugging the protocol used. However, if you have something
to test, count me in! I have access to a network environment where I
could test it.

I did not yet try it out, but my first idea was using VistaPE,
integrating the network drivers, mounting a Samba share and starting
Windows setup. I guess this should work, but I never tried. I guess
integrating the network drivers (or any other needed drivers) works
with the normal Windows tools.

> Well, I intended to do some analysis of the packages and try to implement my
> own WDS server. I have found some information which makes me believe that
> Microsoft probably uses TCP/IP based XML transfer technologies to transfer
> information about available Windows images. These images are transferred
> using CIFS later on I guess. However I never found time to investigate here.
> There might be also a proprietary protocol used.

If you have anything to test, let me know!

Thanks,
Florian