You want a lab for teaching or training that cannot easily be destroyed or
degraded by having so many users come and go on each machine. You have
less than 48 hours to set up the lab, each machine identical.First:
all the machines must have identical hardware. With disparate
hardware, this process will cause you some problems as the drivers
copied and loaded will not always be correct or usable on different
configurations for say, hard drive controllers.
Software you will need:
After your software is installed and configured as you like, thoroughly
defrag the computer. You can use the built in Windows defragger, but I
prefer IOBit's SmartDefrag.
Now, copy the Newsid executable to the C: drive of your "master" machine you have finished installing software onto.
Install Windows SteadyState. There are a lot of options here for various
functions and restrictions, but the one we are MOST interested in is
called "Disk Protection". If the machine fails to enable Disk
Protection, it may require you to reboot, and try again (the Disk
Protection drivers sometimes need a reboot to start working - or
sometimes just close SteadyState and reopen it).
Once Disk Protection is enabled, and you have chosen "Remove all changes at
restart" you will need to set up the Updates portion.
In the Steady State Admin console there is an option titled "Scheduled Software Updates". Click it, and configure Windows Updates on the left side to "Use
Windows SteadyState to automatically...". Select any security updates you may need (dependant on your AV solution, etc).
Now, SteadyState will download updates and reboot, retaining all
changes daily at the time you specifiy. This is important, because
without this feature, your computers would lose their domain status,
and could not apply Windows updates.
Reboot. Verify your changes. Once you have confirmed for yourself that SteadyState is working - by changing settings or files and rebooting to behold them
still in place and unchanged - you should set Steady State's Disk
Protection to "Retain All Changes Permanently". We will re enable the
protection after our work is done - as a final step.
Now we're ready to start cloning!
Put the System Rescuecd in the drive, and reboot the computer. If there is
a "boot menu" on the computer, activate it and choose to boot into the
USB/Removable CD/whatever looks like the CD to you. If you do not have
a boot menu, and the computer does not boot into the System Rescue CD
you may need to alter the BIOS on the computer to put booting into CD
before the hard drive in the boot order.
Once you get the boot prompt for the disk, you will need to boot the disk using the memory cache and DHCP options. The function keys (F2, F3, etc) will tell you
which options they are. For the current version of the system rescuecd
the boot options are:
rescuecd docache dodhcp
and ENTER.
You will see a command line, and some text when the machine finally boots into Linux.
Now it can get a little tricky. There are several options here. I will give you the best case and worst case scenarios:
Best case:
You have two hard drives on the computer, with Windows installed on the first one, and nothing installed on the second.
Worst case:
You have one hard drive, partitioned in one giant partition, running Windows (This is the typical configuration).
I will address the Worst case, and leave the best case as an exercise for the reader.
Because we have already enabled SteadyState we cannot split the partition of
the drive and store our image on the second partition. Therefore, the
entire copy has to be streamed to all the lab computers at once, and
they must be ready to capture and write the packets as they come.
This is definitely achievable.
It will prompt you to "Push any key to begin receiving." Be careful not to do this until we are ready!
Once all of your clone targets are running, and waiting for your keypress, run this command on your "Master" machine;
And then press a key to start the transfer.
Note that in both these cases I am assuming you have a SATA hard drive or PATA drive attached to a SATA controller. An older IDE hard drive might require you replace "/dev/sda" with "/dev/hda"
This could take a very long time. Depending one the speed of your network hardware and hard drives, as long as 12-13 hours or as little as 1.5 hours.
Once all the consoles tell you that the transfer has finished, you may reboot the computers. They should boot directly into Windows. Log in as a local Administrator account.
Start>Run>Newsid.exe
Answer Newsid's questions, telling it that you want a random SID and to change the name of the computer to (something appropriate for the lab computer) and that you would like it to automatically reboot when done.
Do this on all the clone targets. It will take a long time.
Once they have all rebooted, log in as a local Administrator account. Join the computer to a WORKGROUP called "NONE" or "BOGUS" or whatever you like. Then, without rebooting, join to the domain, enter domain admin's credentials when needed. Reboot as instrcuted after joining the Domain. Log in as a Domain Administrator. Set SteadyState's Disk Protection to "Remove all changes at Restart". Reboot, telling SteadyState to Save All Changes Then Reboot.
You're done!
degraded by having so many users come and go on each machine. You have
less than 48 hours to set up the lab, each machine identical.First:
all the machines must have identical hardware. With disparate
hardware, this process will cause you some problems as the drivers
copied and loaded will not always be correct or usable on different
configurations for say, hard drive controllers.
Software you will need:
- Windows Steadystate - Downloadable here.
- A Linux System Rescue CD. Always use the newest version for support with newest hardware. Download here. You will need software (such as Totally Free Burner ) capable of burning an ISO image to a disk.
- Newsid - tool for
changing the SID on a machine so that it does not collide with the
security credentials from another machine. Necessary because the
cloning process copies identical SIDs. Download here.
After your software is installed and configured as you like, thoroughly
defrag the computer. You can use the built in Windows defragger, but I
prefer IOBit's SmartDefrag.
Now, copy the Newsid executable to the C: drive of your "master" machine you have finished installing software onto.
Install Windows SteadyState. There are a lot of options here for various
functions and restrictions, but the one we are MOST interested in is
called "Disk Protection". If the machine fails to enable Disk
Protection, it may require you to reboot, and try again (the Disk
Protection drivers sometimes need a reboot to start working - or
sometimes just close SteadyState and reopen it).
Once Disk Protection is enabled, and you have chosen "Remove all changes at
restart" you will need to set up the Updates portion.
In the Steady State Admin console there is an option titled "Scheduled Software Updates". Click it, and configure Windows Updates on the left side to "Use
Windows SteadyState to automatically...". Select any security updates you may need (dependant on your AV solution, etc).
Now, SteadyState will download updates and reboot, retaining all
changes daily at the time you specifiy. This is important, because
without this feature, your computers would lose their domain status,
and could not apply Windows updates.
Reboot. Verify your changes. Once you have confirmed for yourself that SteadyState is working - by changing settings or files and rebooting to behold them
still in place and unchanged - you should set Steady State's Disk
Protection to "Retain All Changes Permanently". We will re enable the
protection after our work is done - as a final step.
Now we're ready to start cloning!
Put the System Rescuecd in the drive, and reboot the computer. If there is
a "boot menu" on the computer, activate it and choose to boot into the
USB/Removable CD/whatever looks like the CD to you. If you do not have
a boot menu, and the computer does not boot into the System Rescue CD
you may need to alter the BIOS on the computer to put booting into CD
before the hard drive in the boot order.
Once you get the boot prompt for the disk, you will need to boot the disk using the memory cache and DHCP options. The function keys (F2, F3, etc) will tell you
which options they are. For the current version of the system rescuecd
the boot options are:
rescuecd docache dodhcp
and ENTER.
You will see a command line, and some text when the machine finally boots into Linux.
Now it can get a little tricky. There are several options here. I will give you the best case and worst case scenarios:
Best case:
You have two hard drives on the computer, with Windows installed on the first one, and nothing installed on the second.
Worst case:
You have one hard drive, partitioned in one giant partition, running Windows (This is the typical configuration).
I will address the Worst case, and leave the best case as an exercise for the reader.
Because we have already enabled SteadyState we cannot split the partition of
the drive and store our image on the second partition. Therefore, the
entire copy has to be streamed to all the lab computers at once, and
they must be ready to capture and write the packets as they come.
This is definitely achievable.
- Boot every lab computer using the system rescuecd.
- At the boot prompt for the CD type:
- rescuecd docache dodhcp (this will boot the machine, copy the CD contents into memory, and
- After each lab computer run this command after it boots:
intitialize the network card with an IP address from the server)
It will prompt you to "Push any key to begin receiving." Be careful not to do this until we are ready!
Once all of your clone targets are running, and waiting for your keypress, run this command on your "Master" machine;
dd if=/dev/sda|gzip -c | udp-sender --pipe "cat"
And then press a key to start the transfer.
Note that in both these cases I am assuming you have a SATA hard drive or PATA drive attached to a SATA controller. An older IDE hard drive might require you replace "/dev/sda" with "/dev/hda"
This could take a very long time. Depending one the speed of your network hardware and hard drives, as long as 12-13 hours or as little as 1.5 hours.
Once all the consoles tell you that the transfer has finished, you may reboot the computers. They should boot directly into Windows. Log in as a local Administrator account.
Start>Run>Newsid.exe
Answer Newsid's questions, telling it that you want a random SID and to change the name of the computer to (something appropriate for the lab computer) and that you would like it to automatically reboot when done.
Do this on all the clone targets. It will take a long time.
Once they have all rebooted, log in as a local Administrator account. Join the computer to a WORKGROUP called "NONE" or "BOGUS" or whatever you like. Then, without rebooting, join to the domain, enter domain admin's credentials when needed. Reboot as instrcuted after joining the Domain. Log in as a Domain Administrator. Set SteadyState's Disk Protection to "Remove all changes at Restart". Reboot, telling SteadyState to Save All Changes Then Reboot.
You're done!
No comments:
Post a Comment