Hello all - I thought I might share our recent configuration with you in response to Huw Harpers earlier mailing. Our department has recently implemented a SuSE 6.4 server, running 28 Win 98 (previously Win95) clients. Because of the 'inquisitive' nature of our students, we wanted each workstation to rewrite its hard disk after every boot, ensuring a clean environment for the next user, and preventing any junk files from using up hard disk space, and also to prevent any hacking software from being sneakily installed on the network. The whole thing works like this... The SuSE server is configured to run DHCP. Each workstation has a PXE compliant NIC (we use 3COM 3C905C cards) that broadcast their MAC address at boot. The Server has a list of reservations in its DHCP set-up that reserves a single IP address for a specific MAC address (each workstation therefore keeps its own IP address after multiple boots). Once the server has assigned the correct IP addresses to the NICs (the reserved list stops other client machines chatting to the DHCP server and stealing the available IP addresses!), then the server initiates a TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) session that downloads a small DOS-like program called BpBatch to the workstation. BpBatch does a quick check to see if the image file on the workstation differs from the master copy held on the server. If the server copy is newer, BpBatch initiates a download of the new image to the workstation, then the client machine will boot off this nice fresh copy of Windows. If the two image files match, then the really clever bit kicks in! - In the event of matching image files, the workstation restores the C:\ partition of its hard disk from a hidden partition on its own drive (this hidden partition contains a copy of the current server-based image file). BpBatch sets up this hidden partition the first time it loads (based on a text file you can edit), and once it is all set up and running, this makes booting the machine much faster, as each machine does not always have to download a copy of the master image file from the server at every boot. It is worth noting though that when this does need to happen (after you update the Windows images file from a workstation), booting time is very slow, and can only be done 5 workstations at a time, during a 'quiet' time of the day. But, the image file only needs updating if you must install new software to all machines in one go, which if you plan as far ahead as possible, is not very often! As a rough guide, when we used a Win95 set-up with Office 2000 and a few other small-ish programs installed, each machine took around 3 minutes to completely re-write its own hard disk, and boot the clean copy of Windows. Now we have 'upgraded' to Win98, it is around 4 minutes. I did try WinME a few weeks ago, but judging by the huge increase in the size of the C:\ drive, I didn't even bother to try re-imaging it - I think it would have taken it well past the 5/6 minute stage (too long to expect users to put up with I think!). The reaction from our students and staff has been very good - they like the reliability and robustness of the system. A student could literally fdisk the C:\ drive, and a simple off/on of the power has the whole system back up in 4 minutes - much quicker than a re-install would take! Oh - when the time comes to update the Windows set-up, just configure a workstation the way you want, then run a supplementary little program called MrZip (which uses a small text file called ZipWin to tell it what to save and to where). The image is then saved back to your directory on the server in about 15/20 minutes. A nice touch is that you can create a history of image files on your server, so you can restore the whole network to a previous state at any time you want. We also map 2 permanent network drives from the workstation onto the server, and into these drives we install any software (Office/Delphi/Encarta 2000 etc.) This saves disk space on the workstation (making the images faster to load/boot), and means we can back up to tape the entire installed software paths (nice in case of disaster of hacking). We have not noticed any horrible slow down of the software running it remotely this way. Sorry this is getting a bit long. The process of this set-up took me some time to get to grips with, and that was only then because I had the help of a Linux expert here at work! But the set-up works so well I can heartily recommend anyone trying it. A good starting place for further info is this web page: http://www.bpbatch.org/ . Any number of Linux books or web pages will help you with the set-up of DHCP or TFTP (a good explanation and sample set-up files are here: http://www.bpbatch.org/docs/linux.html ). The guide to BpBatch is here: http://cui.unige.ch/info/pc/remote-boot/howto.html , and the program can be downloaded from: http://cui.unige.ch/info/pc/remote-boot/soft/ . A really useful support forum exists at: http://www.bpbatch.org/forum/. Good luck to all! Martin Dart Senior Computing Officer School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences Oxford Brookes University Gipsy Lane Headington, OXFORD Tel (01865) 483667 Mobile 0797 927 1628