Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

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  • Elysarian
    Badcaps Veteran
    • Mar 2013
    • 200
    • United Kingdom
    #1

    Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

    So I finally picked up a replacement machine for the Dell Poweredge 2600 from ebay, a Gen 4 HP Proliant DL380...

    It's not a massive improvement (it has a pair of 3.6GHz netburst Xeons where the Dell had 2.4's) - the big difference for me is it supports 64 bit CPU's and possibly dual-core ones.

    Problem came with getting Win2k8 onto it - I have a VLK and disk but the machine only has a CD drive...

    No problem you say, make a bootable USB stick - no go, I have none spare and want this machine running ASAP.

    What I did do is copy the relevant files from my install DVD a VM on my desktop machine and set it up as a PXE server

    Nice learning experience for me here as I've only ever done this with desktop OS's in the past

    Anyone able to beat that for convoluted?
    Tags: None
    • mariushm
      Badcaps Legend
      • May 2011
      • 3799
      #2
      Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

      Years ago, I used to install FreeBSD on servers by using the small installer cd (maybe 20-30 MB). I was simply telling it to download everything straight from the internet.. the university in town had an official freebsd mirror so the downloads were coming through at 100mbps - it was faster than copying from CD

      ... back in the days of 386, a friend of mine was using dos navigator and null modem or other schemes to copy files to other systems, it worked better than using floppies.

        Comment

        • Mad_Professor
          A Mech Warrior
          • Feb 2011
          • 1587
          #3
          Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

          Been there, done that.

          I have a pxe boot server I built about 2/3 years ago. I got tired of losing install discs or getting to the point of scratched from over-use and wasting time burning new ones. Now practically all my tools are booted over the network and I keep a usb stick for off-site repairs.

          Essentially I built two PE boot discs from the Windows Deployment Toolkit now known as MDT. With a few batch scripts and a driver pack, one for 32 and one for 64. The batch scripts waits for the network to be available then mounts a smb share and loads additional batch scripts from the share. This allows me to change things without having to rebuild the PE every time I need add something to it.

          One of the batch script is the O/S Selector. whatever I choose, it calls for a batch script that then mounts another smb share with the windows setup files, and executes the setup.exe. Then fromt here typical windows install.

          I also got Windows XP pxe install, I have PE make a partition and format the drive and then mount the xp share, start the setup.exe and specify setup should copy the setup files to the drive. I enter in all the information I need. reboot, tell the famous blue setup to install to C: and boom done.

          The ISOs are about 150MB each, and tftp is butt fucking slow, so I use gpxelinux to grab the ISO from an http server. I keep the large files on a local webserver and linux live disc on NFS.

          It works well enough for what I do.
          Attached Files
          Last edited by Mad_Professor; 04-17-2014, 06:10 PM.

            Comment

            • mockingbird
              Badcaps Legend
              • Dec 2008
              • 5483
              #4
              Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

              There's always this option:

              "We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, 'Save me!' He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them."

              -Leonid Brezhnev (On the Yom Kippur War)

                Comment

                • Topcat
                  The Boss Stooge
                  • Oct 2003
                  • 16951
                  • United States
                  #5
                  Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                  ^

                  That reminded me of my first install of Win95 using floppies for a customer that refused to pony up for a CD Drive......wasn't fun and took most the day. Got about 80% through it and ran into the usual bad one....... Thankfully, I didn't have to abort the install, I called a buddy of mine who happened to have the win95 floppies as well and bummed his to finish the install... I charged this guy by the hour. I ended up smiling at the end of the day knowing that it'd have been cheaper for him if he had upgraded his Packard Bell to the 4x CDROM like I tried to tell him.
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                    Comment

                    • kaboom
                      "Oh, Grouchy!"
                      • Jan 2011
                      • 2507
                      • USA
                      #6
                      Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                      Originally posted by Topcat
                      ^

                      That reminded me of my first install of Win95 using floppies for a customer that refused to pony up for a CD Drive......wasn't fun and took most the day. Got about 80% through it and ran into the usual bad one....... Thankfully, I didn't have to abort the install, I called a buddy of mine who happened to have the win95 floppies as well and bummed his to finish the install... I charged this guy by the hour. I ended up smiling at the end of the day knowing that it'd have been cheaper for him if he had upgraded his Packard Bell to the 4x CDROM like I tried to tell him.
                      What did that even have? If you were installing '95 on it, probably 4 or 8 MB of RAM originally.

                      Charged by the hour- bet that taught 'em!
                      "pokemon go... to hell!"

                      EOL it...
                      Originally posted by shango066
                      All style and no substance.
                      Originally posted by smashstuff30
                      guilty,guilty,guilty,guilty!
                      guilty of being cheap-made!

                        Comment

                        • Topcat
                          The Boss Stooge
                          • Oct 2003
                          • 16951
                          • United States
                          #7
                          Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                          Originally posted by kaboom
                          What did that even have? If you were installing '95 on it, probably 4 or 8 MB of RAM originally.

                          Charged by the hour- bet that taught 'em!
                          It was a Pentium 100 with 8mb that I maxed out to 32MB. Had 72 pin FP SIMM's in it. This has been almost 2 decades ago, and I still remember it... Yea, I think he learned his lesson....I sold him a new machine shortly after that.
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                            • ratdude747
                              Black Sheep
                              • Nov 2008
                              • 17135
                              • USA
                              #8
                              Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                              I know Arch linux supports some odd install modes... the oddest (which I haven't done before) involves using another arch rig and chrooting to the new root drive. Kinda like the biological process (used by yeast cells among others) called budding.
                              sigpic

                              (Insert witty quote here)

                                Comment

                                • Heihachi_73
                                  Badcaps Veteran
                                  • Jun 2012
                                  • 713
                                  • Australia
                                  #9
                                  Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                                  Originally posted by Elysarian
                                  So I finally picked up a replacement machine for the Dell Poweredge 2600 from ebay, a Gen 4 HP Proliant DL380...

                                  It's not a massive improvement (it has a pair of 3.6GHz netburst Xeons where the Dell had 2.4's) - the big difference for me is it supports 64 bit CPU's and possibly dual-core ones.

                                  Problem came with getting Win2k8 onto it - I have a VLK and disk but the machine only has a CD drive...

                                  No problem you say, make a bootable USB stick - no go, I have none spare and want this machine running ASAP.

                                  What I did do is copy the relevant files from my install DVD a VM on my desktop machine and set it up as a PXE server

                                  Nice learning experience for me here as I've only ever done this with desktop OS's in the past

                                  Anyone able to beat that for convoluted?
                                  A CD drive? Does it have a floppy drive and LPT ports as well? Does it even support SATA?

                                    Comment

                                    • Elysarian
                                      Badcaps Veteran
                                      • Mar 2013
                                      • 200
                                      • United Kingdom
                                      #10
                                      Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                                      Originally posted by Heihachi_73
                                      A CD drive? Does it have a floppy drive and LPT ports as well? Does it even support SATA?
                                      It has a slot for a floppy drive but none installed - as for SATA... SAS is an option on these machines but no SATA (the CD drive is a laptop format one, I tried a couple of DVD drives in there but couldn't get it to boot from them)

                                      This particular server is the U320 SCSI version (I plan to put the 146GB drives from the Dell in it when I have time).

                                      It is a rack mount server, not a desktop machine

                                        Comment

                                        • cheapie
                                          null
                                          • Jul 2010
                                          • 849
                                          • USA
                                          #11
                                          Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                                          Originally posted by ratdude747
                                          I know Arch linux supports some odd install modes... the oddest (which I haven't done before) involves using another arch rig and chrooting to the new root drive. Kinda like the biological process (used by yeast cells among others) called budding.
                                          Debian has that too (they call it debootstrap), and it's the only way to install Gentoo.

                                            Comment

                                            • Uranium-235
                                              Comrade Glimmer
                                              • Aug 2007
                                              • 5042
                                              • US
                                              #12
                                              Re: Ridiculous lengths to install an OS...

                                              Originally posted by mockingbird
                                              There's always this option:
                                              ohh ohh, I can't imagine you of all people would make me lol today
                                              Cap Datasheet Depot: http://www.paullinebarger.net/DS/
                                              ^If you have datasheets not listed PM me

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