<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><i>"deployment occurs from an iSCSI Windows image, which currently changes the numbering of the internal hard drives and this causes the captured images to be deployed to the wrong drives."</i></span></div>
<div><br></div>Oh hrm... you may want to read the Technet post I linked in the previous email. I tried to do <i>precisely </i>that and it didn't work because Windows Setup won't image a drive that doesn't have an ARC path. I thought I'd get sneaky and wrote a patch to gPXE to allow booting from SAN without writing an iBFT (to prevent WinPE from *ever* seeing the iSCSI device), but the INT 13 hook still messed up my ARC paths.<div>
<br></div><div>Curiously, if you're not deploying a custom Windows Setup but are instead doing imaging directly via ImageX or some other tool, you could likely get away with it quite easily. /Perhaps/ you could try a build of gPXE that prevents iBFT creation, and get away with not having an ARC path on the disk, as your imaging utility shouldn't care. However, you might also have better luck with ARC paths on your system in general than I did... maybe an INT 13 hook won't mess them up.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Andrew Bobulsky</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Binh Thai <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bthai@ncst.com">bthai@ncst.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div vlink="purple" link="blue" lang="EN-US" bgcolor="white"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">“</span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt">So having said that, I'd like to ask: _why_ do you want the drive numbers numbered in this way?</span></tt><span style="color:#1F497D">”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;color:#1F497D"><span>è<span style="font:7.0pt"> </span></span></span><span style="color:#1F497D">I have some unattended programs that capture and deploy OS images. The user may boot a system from a CDROM/USB Drive and do the capturing. Meanwhile, the deployment occurs from an iSCSI Windows image, which currently changes the numbering of the internal hard drives and this causes the captured images to be deployed to the wrong drives. I can make the deployment program aware of the iSCSI drive but I’m looking for a more thorough solution.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">Could you please explain for me the relationship between gPXE iSCSI boot and Windows iSCSI Initiator? When does gPXE end and Windows iSCSI Initiator pick up?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">Thanks</span></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color:#1F497D">Binh Kien Thai</span></b><span style="color:#1F497D"><br>
<br></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#1F497D"></span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><div><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"> Shao Miller [mailto:<a href="mailto:Shao.Miller@yrdsb.edu.on.ca" target="_blank">Shao.Miller@yrdsb.edu.on.ca</a>] <br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, January 18, 2011 12:00 PM</span></p><div class="im"><br><b>To:</b> Binh Thai<br><b>Cc:</b> <a href="mailto:gpxe@etherboot.org" target="_blank">gpxe@etherboot.org</a><br><b>Subject:</b> [SPAM] - Re: [gPXE] Change drive number of the iscsi boot drive? - Email found in subject</div>
<p></p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt">On 1/18/2011 11:42, Binh Thai wrote:</span></tt> </p><div><div></div><div class="h5"><p class="MsoNormal"><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Hi Shao,</span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br>
</span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br></span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">Thanks for your reply.</span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br>
</span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br></span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">I forgot to mention that I meant “drive 0” in the context of Windows disk drive numbering.</span></tt><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br><tt>Oh, ok.</tt><br><br><br></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt">My goal is to boot a system from an iscsi target without disrupting the disk drive numbers of the internal hard drives. For example, if I have one internal hard drive, I want to see it detected as Disk 0 whether I boot from it or from the iscsi target. If I boot from the iSCSI target, I want to see the iscsi target as drive 1, not 0. Currently, the iSCSI drive would become Disk 0 and push the internal drive to Disk 1.</span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br>
</span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br></span><tt><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">I think the PnP enumeration process in Windows has some relationship with the BIOS drive numbering. Could you please point me to some in-depth documentation regarding the BIOS drive numbering and how int13 is used?</span></tt><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:12.0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"><br><tt>I do not believe that BIOS drive numbers and Windows drive numbers have any correlation. Use Microsoft's SysInternals' LoadOrd.exe to check your driver load order. If you ensure that the drivers responsible for the internal storage adapters are loaded before the iSCSI driver, then I think your odds are better for the iSCSI HDD getting a higher number than the internal HDD(s).</tt><br>
<br><tt>However, it might be the case that the startup protocol hands an MBR signature from boot-up to the drive number assignment routine; in this case, whatever drive is used for booting (your iSCSI HDD) will be drive 0 no matter what. You can use Microsoft's SysInternals' WinObj.exe to check the mapping of the ARC names (\ArcName\) to the drive numbers (\Device\HarddiskX).</tt><br>
<br><tt>I can only think of a convoluted way to push the boot drive up and away from Windows drive number 0:</tt><br><tt>- Boot the iSCSI drive</tt><br><tt>- Have GRUB4DOS on the drive</tt><br><tt>- Have GRUB4DOS remap the drive number from 0x80 to 0x81</tt><br>
<tt>- Chain-load the Windows boot-loader</tt><br><tt>- Have BOOT.INI/BCD attempt to boot multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) instead of rdisk(0) (0x81 instead of 0x80)</tt><br><tt>- If the iSCSI drive is \Device\Harddisk1 then hopefully Windows would also further connect it as multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1). ARC _and_ HDD numbers would then be 1 instead of 0. (Untested.)</tt><br>
<br><tt>So having said that, I'd like to ask: _why_ do you want the drive numbers numbered in this way?</tt><br><br><tt>- Shao Miller</tt></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"></span></p></div></div></div>
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