Using Unattended setup files for one-off Windows server installs
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks!
Hi,
I am currently experimenting with using Vagrant and Packer to do all this work with the initial setup of Windows VMs. I am doing it locally using Virtual Box, then converting the box template to Hyper-V. Here is a blog post which explains how this all works:
http://www.hurryupandwait.io/blog/creating-windows-base-images-for-virtualbo...
There is an example on there that does quite a bit of this work, but I want my own setup so am doing my own unattend files. This is where I have spent a lot of time, and it is slightly difficult if you can't see the screen as some of the scripts can just abort and leave the system in an unknown state.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Moss
Sent: 06 December 2015 19:31
To: 'blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org'
Thanks Andrew! I nearly forgot about Vagrant! Though I wish the conversion from Virtual Box to Hyper-V weren't necessary ... unless Virtual Box has now decided to start supporting .vhdx files? Or I wonder whether or not one can do it using a .vhd file? Then it's just a matter of running convert-vhd in PowwerShell. I'll take a look! Wwhile we're at it, would you mind explaining how you ensure that none of the scripts abort and leave the system in an unknown state? Or would it be easier if I have a sighted person standing there while the whole thing is happening? Not horrible,, but my pride was hoping to avoid it ... LOL
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2015 2:40 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Thanks Andrew! I nearly forgot about Vagrant! Though I wish the conversion from Virtual Box to Hyper-V weren't necessary ... unless Virtual Box has now decided to start supporting .vhdx files? Or I wonder whether or not one can do it using a .vhd file? Then it's just a matter of running convert-vhd in PowwerShell. I'll take a look! Wwhile we're at it, would you mind explaining how you ensure that none of the scripts abort and leave the system in an unknown state? Or would it be easier if I have a sighted person standing there while the whole thing is happening? Not horrible,, but my pride was hoping to avoid it ... LOL
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2015 2:40 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi,
One way of doing this is to ensure the script exits by doing something significant. For example, the system I linked to earlier enables remote WinRM at the very end of the script. Once WinRM is made available, the system is shut down using a WinRM call on the actual host machine. This means that if the script finished without errors, then the system gets shut down.
Andrew.
________________________________________
From: Blind-sysadmins [blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] on behalf of Katherine Moss [Katherine.Moss@gordon.edu]
Sent: 07 December 2015 00:49
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Using Unattended setup files for one-off Windows server installs
Thanks Andrew! I nearly forgot about Vagrant! Though I wish the conversion from Virtual Box to Hyper-V weren't necessary ... unless Virtual Box has now decided to start supporting .vhdx files? Or I wonder whether or not one can do it using a .vhd file? Then it's just a matter of running convert-vhd in PowwerShell. I'll take a look! Wwhile we're at it, would you mind explaining how you ensure that none of the scripts abort and leave the system in an unknown state? Or would it be easier if I have a sighted person standing there while the whole thing is happening? Not horrible,, but my pride was hoping to avoid it ... LOL
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2015 2:40 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi,
One way of doing this is to ensure the script exits by doing something significant. For example, the system I linked to earlier enables remote WinRM at the very end of the script. Once WinRM is made available, the system is shut down using a WinRM call on the actual host machine. This means that if the script finished without errors, then the system gets shut down.
Andrew.
________________________________________
From: Blind-sysadmins [blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] on behalf of Katherine Moss [Katherine.Moss@gordon.edu]
Sent: 07 December 2015 00:49
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Using Unattended setup files for one-off Windows server installs
Thanks Andrew! I nearly forgot about Vagrant! Though I wish the conversion from Virtual Box to Hyper-V weren't necessary ... unless Virtual Box has now decided to start supporting .vhdx files? Or I wonder whether or not one can do it using a .vhd file? Then it's just a matter of running convert-vhd in PowwerShell. I'll take a look! Wwhile we're at it, would you mind explaining how you ensure that none of the scripts abort and leave the system in an unknown state? Or would it be easier if I have a sighted person standing there while the whole thing is happening? Not horrible,, but my pride was hoping to avoid it ... LOL
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2015 2:40 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Andrew,
What's the advantage of going from Virtual box to hyper-V?
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday 6 December 2015 19:40
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi,
None, actually I am using Virtual Box on my system right now as it is less prone to giving JFW issues with authorisation keys etc. If you have a Hyper-V server though (which I have here at home) then I need to convert.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh Ó Héiligh
Sent: 07 December 2015 14:12
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi,
None, actually I am using Virtual Box on my system right now as it is less prone to giving JFW issues with authorisation keys etc. If you have a Hyper-V server though (which I have here at home) then I need to convert.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh Ó Héiligh
Sent: 07 December 2015 14:12
To: Blind sysadmins list
Andrew,
What's the advantage of going from Virtual box to hyper-V?
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Sunday 6 December 2015 19:40
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi,
I am currently experimenting with using Vagrant and Packer to do all this work with the initial setup of Windows VMs. I am doing it locally using Virtual Box, then converting the box template to Hyper-V. Here is a blog post which explains how this all works:
http://www.hurryupandwait.io/blog/creating-windows-base-images-for-virtualbo...
There is an example on there that does quite a bit of this work, but I want my own setup so am doing my own unattend files. This is where I have spent a lot of time, and it is slightly difficult if you can't see the screen as some of the scripts can just abort and leave the system in an unknown state.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Moss
Sent: 06 December 2015 19:31
To: 'blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org'
I am primarily a linux user and I'm still stuck on Windows 7. But Icreate Win7 virtual machinesin both vmware and virtualbox by putting an autounattend.xml file on an image of a diskette. In both vmware and virtualbox, you can create a virtual diskette drive and point it at the image file. Then when you boot, the Windows installer sees the answer file on the diskette and proceeds with the install. I created the image of the diskette with the dd command in linux. I can tell you how to do that or even send you a blank diskette image if you'd like. It would be interesting to see what Windows would do if you double clicked on a file that was an image of a diskette. I don't know if Windows would know what to do with that. Linux does, of course. And if you already had a Windows virtual machine, you could make it think the image was a diskette drive and then copy your answer file to the diskette image. But right off hand, I don't know how you'd get an autounattend.xml file onto an image of a diskette on a real Windows machine. On 12/06/2015 01:30 PM, Katherine Moss wrote:
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Instead of a diskette, can you use a virtual DVD drive? (I prefer to configure my virtual machines with the same hardware that my physical hosts have (none of them have Diskette drives)).
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G Heim
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2015 10:05 AM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Instead of a diskette, can you use a virtual DVD drive? (I prefer to configure my virtual machines with the same hardware that my physical hosts have (none of them have Diskette drives)).
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G Heim
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2015 10:05 AM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Interesting point, my Packer templates have the virtual disk drive for the autounattend file as well as some PowerShell scripts. I don't need to make an image with DD; I just need to add the relevant files into an XML file for the template. However yes that disk drive is still there and it doesn't need to be.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Moss
Sent: 07 December 2015 17:20
To: jheim@math.wisc.edu; Blind sysadmins list
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
Interesting point, my Packer templates have the virtual disk drive for the autounattend file as well as some PowerShell scripts. I don't need to make an image with DD; I just need to add the relevant files into an XML file for the template. However yes that disk drive is still there and it doesn't need to be.
Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Katherine Moss
Sent: 07 December 2015 17:20
To: jheim@math.wisc.edu; Blind sysadmins list
Hi all, I've been looking at this for a bit and I can't find anything definitive. I'm trying to do the following: Create an autounattend.xml file via Windows SIM that covers all passes of the Windows installation Use my newly created file in order to install one of my Virtual machines (I don't care about capturing an image, for this is just so that I don't need to go through all of the steps manually, and so that I do not require the assistance of a sighted individual (sysprep and image capture will come later with SCCM) Ensure that Hyper-V will recognize the file (the question is where to place the file so that it is automatically discovered by Windows setup, since the use of a virtual rather than a physical machine seems to complicate things; read something about someone writing the file to the virtual DVD-Rom drive added to the VM, though God only knows how they did that) Input would be great ... Thanks! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
participants (4)
-
Andrew Hodgson -
Darragh Ó Héiligh -
John G Heim -
Katherine Moss