creating a Ghost Network boot "CD" 3

[mlchris2]

I need to create a Ghost Network boot "CD", I have some servers that dont have floppy drives in them. I normally boot a pc/server with a Network Boot Disk and then use a second disk that contains the ghost applicaion. It works fine.

I did some searching online and found a bit of information on creating a boot disk... but nothing that was close to what I needed.

Here is what I have done so far...
Using Roxio and my Network Boot disk, I created a
bootable cd. It boot and connects to my network just
fine.

Here is my problem...
I cant seem to get a bootable cd with the ghost application on it. I have tried using a program called MagicISO to create a boot disk image and I cant get it to work.

For those with some insight, I sure would appriciate your assitance.

Mark

 

[HarleyGod]

Chekc out this website. It is everyhing you need to do this.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...00/NT/Me/98/XP&src=sg&pcode=ghost&svy=&csm=no

 

[mlchris2]

the link is broken. On another note, I've spend the last day or so on Symantec website and on the web trying to find information on how to burn a bootable cd that contains both the Network boot and Ghost appilication. So far I have been able to burn one or the other, but not both to the same cd...

Thanks for the help, if you have a more specific post in mind, I appriciate you sharing.

Mark

 

[Tightpants]

I have just connected to the link but didn't feel it answered your question. I have also tried to create a network boot disk on CD but it didn't work so you have got further than I did.

Would it be possible to put the ghost application on your network so that once the network boot disk has done it's thing you could run ghost from a network drive?

 

[Tightpants]

Just out of interest, when you created your network boot disk did you use DHCP or a fixed IP address? I think my boot CD failed because the machine is trying to write to the CD during startup.

 

[mlchris2]

I never though about putting ghost on my network drive and running it from there.... I'll give that a try. I am assinging DHCP address.

In order to create a Network boot CD, I created the network boot cd in Ghost 2003 and then using Nero/Roxio, I created a bootable cd from that floppy.

I'll keep working on it and see what i can come up with.

 

[Tightpants]

I tried making a bootable CD today by using Sonic RecordNow in the same way as you used Roxio. I wanted to test if I could also run Ghost from a network drive.

However the boot CD works fine until it reaches "Initialising TCP/IP via DHCP". I get the error message General Failure reading Drive A. Abort, Retry, Failure.

This is the same problem I had before. Do you have any ideas why this might be failing? I am using Ghost 2003 with MS-DOS (not PC-DOS). I would like to get past this stage so I can then run Ghost to do a backup to a network drive.

 

[mlchris2]

to update you...

I went through 20 or so cd's getting this to work and ended up using the Network Boot CD and running ghost.exe from my mapped drive. I even attempted to create a Ghost network boot disk from USB flash drive.

I experienced this when I created my USB flash boot disk, but not my network Boot cd.

Here's what I did...

using ghost 2003, create your network boot cd, using PC-DOS. Open your writing program and create a boot disk from disk image. Insert the newly created network boot disk and obtain image from that file. burn the cd... it should boot fine.

if it fails for you... boot using the floppy to ensure the floppy works fine.

 

[Tightpants]

The floppy works fine but it creates a connect.dat file during bootup. If I make the floppy read-only it fails in the same way as the CD because the connect.dat file cannot be created. I am not sure how I can get round this.

Anyway, regarding your original question... during my search for a solution to my problem I found a note on the Symantec Web site which says that the ghost.exe file could not be run from a mapped network drive. So my earlier suggestion would appear to be incorrect.

However I found this link which claims to be able to combine multiple boot disks onto one cd which may help you:

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?p=951113&mode=threaded

 

[Tangz]

Wow, I noticed my instructions were getting lots of web searches and I'm glad to help. I noticed there wasnt much assistance in creating these types of things so I thought I would create a help file. (Never knew there was that many ppl out there with the same problem)

Tangz

 

[mlchris2]

Maybe what Symantec is refering to is different than what I was refering to putting GHOST.EXE on my network share and using the Network boot disk to map a drive to that share... when complete, I run g:\ghost.exe.

Believe me it works. I ghosted 5 workstations and 6 servers to/from images with this process. No problems with it.

I learned not to always believe what you read...

 

[Tightpants]

I'm pleased to hear it works mlchris2.

Thanks Tangz for the post too. However I tried following your instructions and got stuck on the following item:

7. Now, go ahead and copy the "net" folder from your desktop to the floppy drive.

My floppy disk did not have enough space to copy the files. Is there anything I can delete to create enough space?

 

[Tangz]

if you followed the instructions you should actually have some extra room on the floppy as well... What is the file size of your network driver (the *.dos file)

 

[Tightpants]

The *.dos file is 47K.

The contents of the CD/DVD Startup Disk are:

14/08/2002 16:03 44,240 IBMBIO.COM
14/08/2002 16:03 42,550 IBMDOS.COM
14/08/2002 16:03 53,786 COMMAND.COM
14/08/2002 16:03 37,681 MOUSE.COM
04/06/2005 22:49 174 AUTOEXEC.BAT
04/06/2005 22:50 324 CONFIG.SYS
14/08/2002 16:03 41,302 oakcdrom.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 30,955 btdosm.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 64,425 flashpt.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 21,971 btcdrom.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 35,340 aspi2dos.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 37,984 aspi8dos.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 14,378 aspi4dos.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 44,828 aspi8u2.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 29,628 aspicd.sys
14/08/2002 16:03 21,180 mscdex.exe
16 File(s) 520,746 bytes


The contents of the \NET folder are:

14/08/2002 16:03 374,038 CMDS16.EXE
14/08/2002 16:03 7,840 DLSHELP.SYS
14/08/2002 16:03 47,760 El90x.dos
14/08/2002 16:03 354,263 NET.EXE
14/08/2002 16:03 74,016 NET.MSG
14/08/2002 16:03 165,580 NETH.MSG
04/06/2005 22:44 159 NETWORK.INI
14/08/2002 16:03 1,539 NETXP.MSG
14/08/2002 16:03 89,540 NTSTS.DOS
14/08/2002 16:03 21,696 PROTMAN.DOS
14/08/2002 16:03 13,770 PROTMAN.EXE
04/06/2005 22:44 508 PROTOCOL.INI
12 File(s) 1,150,709 bytes

Is there anything I can delete from this list to enable the files to fit on a floppy?

 

[Tangz]

you seem to have one to many files in your /NET directory.

heres what I have in mine....

dis_pkt.dos
netbind.com
protoman.dos
protoman.exe
protocol.ini
rtgbind.dos (this is my NDIS2 driver, yours will be different)

I think what you did was copy the wrong /net folder to the new floppy. You might have coppied the one from the "cd/dvd startup floppy" instead of the "network boot floppy" (or visa verca)

 

[vexas]

I find an external USB floppy drive works fine for this when a PC does not have a built in floppy drive.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=floppy+usb&scoring=p

Good luck with the CD.

-vex

 

[Tightpants]

Tangz

I've still not got it working! The principle is okay but the files are too large to fit on the floppy disk. Also the config.sys and autoexec.bat files in your instructions are calling up files which don't exist on the PC-DOC floppies. eg. netbind.com and dis_pkt.dos.

MS-DOS gives a list of files which are a closer match to your list. I don't think your files have been created with the Ghost Wizards!

For the time being I have given up particularly as other searches on the Web show that others are having similar problems.

All I would like to do is convert my Ghost Drive Mapping Boot Disk to a CD version but it doesn't work because you need to write to the disk in the process. I don't know how mlchris2 has got it to work.

Thanks for your help though.

vexas

Have you tested your Ghost boot disks with an external USB floppy drive? I didn't think they were supported. Let me know because this would do the job for me.



V

 

[ACraib]

I use BartPE

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

and it works like a charm .... once you've loaded the correct network drivers for the machine you support.

 

[Colmmac]

Try this, I managed to create a boot disk that boots up with ghost on it, aswell as a ghost image and dumps this image directly onto the pc - no network needed. If you need and image file larger than a regular cd, use the ghost explorer on your server to span the image file to fit on more than one disk.

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t32468.html

Colm

 

[mlchris2]

Tightpants,

I did nothing out of the ordinary. I created a Network boot disk using the Wizard in Ghost 2003. I then used that floppy and created a bootable cd using Nero or Roxio ( I was able to do it both ways). I then copied ghost.exe to my network share, boot from cd and run ghost from that network share.

I have yet been able to create a entire Network & Ghost boot CD... Everytime I transfer the Ghost dir to the cd, after boot it doesnt recognize or cant find the directory.

It may be what your copying or how your doing the copying...

What I did was fairly easy... I cant get any more detailed, unless I write you a step by step.

Mark