Ghost Corporate Edition Network question

[mindspin]

Recently I received my copy of Ghost Corporate Edition 8.0, it is the most recent version of the image creating and restoring program for businesses. Everything works just fine, creating an image over the network works perfectly, adding special operations like removing Office XP or adding a piece of software works perfect also... One thing still keeps me from sitting back and relax, I need to use a disk set to boot the clients into Ghost.exe from where i can connect to the GhostCast server. It may sound lazy but when you need to perform the same actions on 40 computers it gets pretty annoying.

There should be an option to use the Wake-On-Lan function of the computers we have here, i've been reading documents about PXE and TFTP and BOOTP but i just cant figure out how it actually works...

I know how to set the client computers to boot from lan, that is just a matter of chaning a simple BIOS setting. But how do I make them boot from the server?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[mindspin]

Got some things figured out now. I'll describe them here for people who might encounter the same problems and questions.

PXE is Pre-Boot Execution Environment, it is a protocol which is able of identifing the NIC on which it is located to the network. You are able of getting an IP adress through DHCP.

TFTP is Trivial File Transfer Protocol, basically it is the same as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) but it has no security at all. It is good for usage on local networks where working from a command line is neccesary.

BOOTP is something i dont yet really know, dont think im going to need it for solving my problem.

Well right now what i did is the following:

On Client:
- Set LAN first boot device in BIOS

On Server (Windows 2003 Server)
- Installed 3Com Boot Services
- Added the Client pc by entering the NIC MAC adress
- Made a boot package with norton ghost console
- Installed TFTPD service on server

All i manage to get right now is the following:

NVIDIA Boot Agent, PXE-2.0 (build 082 V1.82)
Copyright (C) 2001 NVIDIA Corporation
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 0C 6E B7 C2 23 GUID: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFF
CLIENT IP: 192.168.0.10 MASK: 255.255.255.0 DHCP IP: 192.168.0.1
TFTP.
PXE-T01: File not found
PXE-E3B: TFTP Error - File not found
PXE-M0F: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent

I really hope anyone can help me out or has encountered similair problems (and might solved them).

Will update this topic tomorrow when im at work again.

 

[BlueOcean]

little info

Similar goal as far as booting from wake on lan. What I have found is that on most adapters that say they support PXE what they are really saying is that they will only wake a system from hibernate not from a shutdown state. I have roughly 500 laptops and 1000 desktops of varying models and have tried unsuccessfully to wake from Dameware. Dameware relies on Magic Packet technology that interacts with the PXE from my understanding. I spoke with one of the vendors and recieved the info about hibernate I mentioned above. So if anyone knows please post it.

As far as Ghost 8. You need to use the console application not the server app. You need to have the client installed on the target. It eliminates the need for the boot disks from my understanding. We have this functionality but are prevented from using it because we have deployed Raxco Perfect Disk Defragmenter on all systems. WARNING at present if you install the Ghost client and Perfedt Disk on the same system kiss it good bye, they use some files in common which cause the system to die. Raxco to date despite trouble tickets has not resolved the issue.

Sorry can't give you the details its been over a year since we last deployed the client.

Good Luck.

 

[LNCPapa]

Blue hit it on the head with using the ghost client service located on the Ghost Enterprise CD. Load that onto all your clients and you can do what you want with them as long as they're powered on. It runs as a system service and reports back to the ghost server saying it's alive. Be sure to have a hole poked in your client firewall also so that it can report and you can see it in the ghost console. BTW - if you use anything like Deepfreeze to lock your machines make sure the machines are thawed prior to you trying any ghost operations. The machines will reboot and fail to join your ghost session if you don't. I don't remember for sure, but I think the port for ghost is 5405, but that might be netsupport. It could also be 1793 (I get confused sometimes.)

Quote from Symantec: For Wake on LAN to work, power must still be going to the network interface card, such as when a computer is in hibernation mode.

 

[mindspin]

First of all thanks for the replies, but I think you guys are missing a point here. We are running Netware on this network, previously we placed the images on a mapped drive.
Got into a room with 40 computers, started up 5 computers using a home made boot disk. It loads a few drivers, logs onto the mapped drive and gives us access to the Ghost.exe file. After that i simply load the program and select the image I want to copy onto the computer.

Well imagine doing that to 40 pc's, your whole day is wasted on restoring images...

So right now all i could desire is the tftp server to work, It really takes away a lot if work if all you need to do is press the power button of the computer (thanks for mentioning about the PXE support Blue). The TFTP server is normally just running on a Windows 2003 server i suppose (I've checked services and the TFTPD is started).

Should I keep using 3Com Boot services or should I disable that program, how does this program actually run? Just start the BOOTPTAB editor and it runs? It uses a certain service? Cant find any answers to those questions.

 

[cnumanako]

I have the same problem:

-have 50 clients with their hdds having no partitions (as in brand new) with no floppy drives and no cdroms

-have Norton ghost 10

-have master pc with OS already installed in it

-could have lan or client server setup

-lan of mobo of client has on board lan boot rom (i think i need to enable this)

-have Nvidia boot agent in bios (CRU51-M9)

Problem: how can i use this lan rom and Nvidia boot agent so i could ghost over the network?

Madly in need of help. Thanks