Superior RIS: Deploying Alternative OSs

I've been tinkering with Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) to take it beyond its out-of-the-box capabilities. Some of my tinkering has involved complicated tweaks. However, using RIS Menu Editor, a free utility from 3Com, is simple. The tool lets you install OSs other than Windows 2000 Professional or execute any bootable disk's routine.

In theory, Microsoft designed RIS to install only Win2K Pro. To do so, however, RIS launches executable code similar to the code on the four 3.5" disks you use to install Win2K Pro without RIS. If RIS is simply a fancy launch of the same installation routines that are on these disks, couldn't you load other disks' routines into RIS and run them, too? Yes, you can, and RIS Menu Editor helps you to do so.

Recap
Before you begin using third-party tools to customize desktop deployments, I recommend learning to use RIS's inherent customization capabilities. With two articles in hand—"Superior RIS: Customizing Win2K Installs," April 2001, and "Superior RIS: Automating Application Installations," May 2001—you have enough information to build a highly customized RIS-based installation system. In "Superior RIS: Customizing Win2K Installs," I show you how to configure RIS's Client Installation Wizard to prompt users for information, populate environment variables with this information, and pass the information to Win2K Pro installations. Thus, you can customize most parts—such as IP settings and screen settings—of the installation.

In "Superior RIS: Automating Application Installations," I show you how to edit the [GuiRunOnce] section of a Win2K unattended installation file so that it launches third-party application installations after RIS loads the OS. You can use little-known unattended silent installation tricks in the [GuiRunOnce] section to deploy most applications.

Although you can use disk-imaging tools to clone a preconfigured hard disk in a matter of minutes, this method isn't as flexible as RIS. And for some organizations, disk imaging simply isn't an option. For example, your network's workstations might come from a variety of hardware manufacturers, which can befuddle disk-imaging solutions.

You can use the tactics that the Superior RIS articles teach to prepare a RIS installation that's customizable to any workstation. You can launch a RIS deployment in 2 minutes and come back an hour later to a target system that has a customized Win2K Pro configuration and all additional applications (e.g., Microsoft Office, Visio, Symantec's pcAnywhere) installed. However, if you've ever rolled out a large quantity of desktop computers, you know that sometimes you need to do a lot of work before you install the OS. You can use RIS Menu Editor to supplement your customization techniques, prepare your systems, reduce your workload, deploy an OS other than Win2K, and make almost any bootable disk an installation option on your RIS server.

Using RIS Menu Editor
I could devote an entire article to explaining how RIS starts executables, but you wouldn't gain much value from a discussion about this complicated process. And you don't need to understand this RIS capability to use it: 3Com, a dominant player in the NIC market, figured out the technicalities for you and produced RIS Menu Editor, a front-end mechanism that you can use to create an image file of a bootable disk. The name you choose for this disk image becomes a RIS Client Installation Wizard menu item. If the installing user selects that menu item, the RIS server transmits the disk image to the target workstation that then boots from the disk image as if from the actual disk. Thus, if your bootable disk would usually leave you at a command prompt, so would the disk image you use RIS Menu Editor to create. You'll find yourself working from a virtual A drive.

Before you use RIS Menu Editor to customize mass deployments, you need to familiarize yourself with the tool. Before you can test the tool's functionality, you need a bootable disk and the RIS Menu Editor utility. The disk's routine doesn't need to be fancy; I recommend making a plain vanilla DOS bootable disk (i.e., a disk with minimal functionalities) for your initial tests. You can download the RIS Menu Editor utility from 3Com's LanWorks Web site. Unpack the utility onto your RIS server. The RIS Menu Editor package includes an executable, a few supporting files, and documentation. Risme.exe is the main program.

Launching RIS Menu Editor results in a straightforward interface. You can choose from two tabs: the Maintenance and Troubleshooting tab (the default tab) and the Automatic Setup tab. These tabs correspond to options in the Client Installation Wizard's main menu. Your tab choice determines the menu in which RIS Menu Editor inserts the disk image as an installation option. On the Maintenance and Troubleshooting tab, clicking Add starts the Create Menu Wizard, which you step through to create an image of your bootable disk and add the disk image as a Client Installation Wizard Maintenance and troubleshooting tools menu option.

The wizard's first panel, which Figure 1 shows, gives you the option to make one disk image that will appear as a menu option in RIS's Maintenance and troubleshooting tools menu or to make a submenu in Maintenance and troubleshooting tools that you can then fill with several images and submenus. For your initial test, select the first option: Single menu and image file.

The next wizard panel asks you to choose a friendly (i.e., display) name for the disk you want to image. The Client Installation Wizard will display this name for users, so choose a logical name, then click Next.