Unattended Server

These instructions are basically my adjustments to Unattended's step-by-step guide.

1. Create a directory for the install files
   cd <where you are going to put things>
mkdir unattended
cd uattended
2. Download Unattended
   • Zip file download
     Download and unpack the latest version of the Unattended files. I was using an OS X server, so they were downloaded with curl instead of wget:
     wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/unattended/files/unattended/49rc4/unattended-4.9.zip/download
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/unattended/files/unattended/49rc4/unattended-4.9-dosboot.zip/download
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/unattended/files/unattended/49rc4/unattended-4.9-linuxboot.zip/download 

     Unpack the files:

     unzip unattended-4.9.zip
unzip unattended-4.9-dosboot.zip
unzip unattended-4.9-linuxboot.zip
   • svn checkout
     
     svn co https://unattended.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/unattended/trunk unattended

   svn co https://unattended.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/unattended unattended

3. DNS configuration
   Configure your DNS so that the server the Unattended files are on is reachable at "ntinstall"

4. Create the SMB share
   For an OS X Server, use Workgroup Manager to share the "install" folder to Windows users. For Linux, install Samba:
   yum install samba

   Then apply settings to /etc/samba/smb.conf:

   [global]
...
guest account   = guest
unix extensions = no
...
[install]
  comment  = Unattended
  writable = no
  locking  = no
  path     = /path/to/unattended/install
  guest ok = yes
5. Prepare the Operating System distribution point
   The install directory tree from the Unattended distribution is exported read-only with guest access permitted. You need to fill it with support programs and files and the operation systems and software programs you want to install unattended.

   When you later boot from the boot disk, it will ask you for the full Windows UNC name of this share; the default it assumes is \\ntinstall\install. The boot disk maps this share as the Z: drive, and that is how we will refer to it from now on.

   Create a subdirectory under Z:\os to hold a copy of your Windows CD. You should probably give the directory a meaningful name like winxp or win2ksp4, and you probably want to limit the name to eight characters lest it look strange when viewed from DOS. (The name does not matter much because install.pl will scan the contents to figure out what it is. However, you should limit the name to 8 characters or fewer, especially if you are using the Linux-based boot disk.)

6. Support files and programs
   The distribution files of Unattended include the needed FreeDOS files and programs. Additionally you need to download and unpack the following components of DJGPP:
   cd ~/unattended-4.9/install
mkdir djgpp
cd djgpp
wget http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2/djdev203.zip
wget http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2misc/csdpmi5b.zip
wget http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/perl561b.zip
wget http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/pico396b.zip

   Use the -L switch to unzip when you extract these. Otherwise, you may find that some files extract under bin while others extract under BIN, and this will cause all sorts of trouble when the system tries to access them from DOS. Windows users do not need to worry about this, because Windows (like DOS) is not case-sensitive. We were working under OS X so:

   unzip -L djdev203.zip
unzip -L csdpmi5b.zip
unzip -L perl561b.zip
unzip -L pico396b.zip
rm *.zip
7. Windows OS
   Next, copy the i386 folder from your Windows CD-ROM to the new directory. For example, for Windows XP, you would copy the i386 folder to Z:\os\winxp, thus creating Z:\os\winxp\i386.

8. Add Device Drivers
   Under the i386 folder on the distribution point, create a folder named $oem$. Under that folder, create a folder named $1. Windows Setup will copy everything below the $1 folder to the %SystemDrive% (normally C:) during installation. See Microsoft's description of the distribution share for the gory details.

   You may put your driver folder anywhere you like under the $1 folder, and you may add as many driver folders as you like. The install.pl script will automatically scan for all driver folders and offer to add them to the OemPnPDriversPath setting in the unattend.txt file for you.

9. Populate the packages directory
   The included OS-update scripts and application install scripts contain URLs for automatically downloading the necessary installers. There's a couple of scripts you need to run to go through those scripts and download the files:
   cd /path/to/unattended/install/tools
./script-update
./prepare

   Note - when downloaded from svn, script-update and wget squawked about Sourceforge's SSL certificate. Got around that by editing /usr/local/bin/wgetrc and adding check_certificate = off. The Zip version of script-update doesn't connect to a secure web-server at Sourceforge.
   Note 2 - running prepare on OS X crapped out with cut: stdin: line too long. Removing -ne from the echo commands in prepare allowed it to run. See http://community.livejournal.com/macosx/5901063.html?thread=47473671#t47473671
   Windows XP SP2 WPA2 patch: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893357
   Sync the script directories

   scp -r scripts username@192.168.0.x:~/Public/unattended-4.7/install/