Maintenance

After a week of dead ends and annoyances (NetRestore and SuperDuper don't like Leopard, BootCamp is useless, Windows stinks, Mac OS doesn't have NTFS RW) I now have the new iMacs and a general plan for building them as dual or triple boot machines.
1) Don't use BootCamp. I couldn't get it to partition things the way I wanted. I created a separate build on an external drive, booted from that and partitioned the internal drive into 4 logical partitions. 3 for the OSes, one for data. This left me with an OS-less machine.
2) Rebooted with my shiny new WünderWindows install disk and installed Windows in its own partition.
3) Rebooted with external drive and used CCC to build an internal copy of OS X. Dual-boot works!
4) Rebooted with Ubuntu install disk. Installed Gutsy. Note: install grub to /dev/partition-ID-of-install or there will be problems (with Windows, of course). I did a manual partition of the intended space in order to provide a swap partition. The original space was 32GB so I resized it to 30GB and set aside 2GB for a swap. Not sure if this is ideal, but it seems to work alright.
5) Installed Bootpicker, made some pretty pictures to represent OSes and voila! Triple-boot works!
6) Used WinClone to image the Windows partition, and CCC to image the OS X partition. No clever solution for the Linux side, although I did boot in to BartPE and ran ghost32 to create a .gho image of the Ubuntu partition. Haven't tested it to see if it works though.

Problems:
* xorg is a hassle. The graphics card is a Radeon HD 2600 Pro and isn't supported by the fglrx driver in the repos yet. I installed the latest ATI driver (8.42) from the AMD website (as in "not a deb") which installs, but gives crap performance - I can't seems to get HW acceleration and Xorg.log reports that the kernel doesn't support it.
* Wireless is a problem so far. Lots of reports on ndiswrapper working on it, so I'll need to do some more reading. Wired NIC works fine, though, so there's no hurry.
* iSight seems to work perfectly with v4l2 drivers.
* Bluetooth registers, but I haven't tried using it yet.

Next: get scripts working for deployment.
1) Auto-identification (as in getting the machine to automatically provide the correct hostname. Marc apparently has something that does this)
2) Bind to OU (again, Marc has this)
3) Test the Windows build in the lab. Get audio working and all the Sanako config files tweaked for USB headsets and the internal RealTek HD audio card.
4) Build the dual-proc G4 with Tiger server and see if I can get a NetBoot system working

Update: I downloaded Envy which installs the latest drivers from NVIDIA and ATI. It installed the 8.443 driver (I think that's the version) and now the basic setup works. Still no Compiz, but X is not laborious and unusable anymore. Still no joy on the wireless front, though.

Some hotfixes and updates are not labelled with a date. nLite requires them to be sorted by date, as that is the order nLite slipstreams the patches. As of now, the updates that we care about, with no date stamp are:
IE7-WINDOWSXP-X86-ENU.exe - release date: 2007/10/04
KB923789 - 2006/11/14
Others have screwy dates (instead of yyyy/mo/dd some patches use something like mo/dd/yyyy)

Other patches cannot be integrated for some reason (no feedback on error):
js56nen - release date: 2003/03/19
KB824105 - release date: 2003/09/03
HMTCDWizard (included in a RyanVM Addon, though) - release date: 2003/09/25
KB833407 - release date: 2004/02/10
gdidettool - release date: 2004/09/14
KB917283 - release date: 2006/07/11
KB937057 - release date: 2007/09/11
KB937058 - release date: 2007/09/11
KB937059 - release date: 2007/09/11
KB937060 - release date: 2007/09/11
The last four (937057-060) are VBStudio patches and I'm not sure they *need* to be slipped.
I'll try using HFSlip on these, but I'm not sure when I should slip them.

Slipstreaming WMP11 has been problematic unless I slip it without additional patches. I'm going to try adding the patches with nLite or HFSlip

Others still complain in a nondescript fashion:
KB890830-V1.35.exe (error is: not to be installed, but run)
WindowsRightsManagementServicesSP2-KB917275... (error is: not supported for integration)

Took a longer look at this problem:
1) I uninstalled the USB hubs with Device Manager and allowed Windows to re-install them. Didn't work.
2) Booted the machine with a Linux LiveCD. It reported that there was NO communication with any USB ports.

My conclusion: motherboard is screwed. At least in so far as the USB hubs are concerned. This is not unexpected as the machine has always run at the upper end of the acceptable temperature range. It is still under warranty so I'll get the CStore to come down.

Problem: if the board gets RMA'd what do we do in the meantime?
Answer: Pull station 24 from Lab C and rebuild it as the TS.

UPDATE: I have a call in to the UVic CStore to come in and have a look.

Eoin reported this late in the day, while Greg was at a meeting, so I started dealing with it, and Greg appeared later. We managed to get the machine working with PS2 keyboard and mouse; no clue as to why the USB ports all seem to be dead.

Got one of the new iMacs for testing. It didn't ship with Leopard installed (came with an upgrade disk), so I upgraded.
Installed a bunch of apps including Parallels (with Windows and Ubuntu).
After discussing various implementation options with Martin it became clear that an all-VM based solution to deploying the Sanako system will not work (at least, not easily). As a result, I used BootCamp to partition the drive (32GB for Windows), and installed Windows. As I used a custom install disk, there are a couple of issues to sort out, but I'm close to being able to testing the Sanako system on it. I'll need a USB>serial adapter to test the teacher station part of this equation, and then I'll need to work out the USB headset/soundcard config.
Once all of that works I'll need to get the BootPicker working.

Version one is only partially successful. WMP11 and IE 7 were not installed/slipped and the Java addon didn't make it in either. Notepad++ is installed, but does not show up in the Start>Programs menu.

Install itself went fine. The DriverPacks system uses a rather time-consuming first-run installer to get the drivers in. It has a non-interactive GUI that I don't like. I'll try Method 2 next time.

Slow work this.
Slipstreamed WMP11, Hotfixes and so forth, creating zip packages at each stage before proceeding.
Created initial build with nLite. Next step is to integrate the Driver Packs. Then I'll have an ISO to test.

The appealing part of all this is that I can potentially create a *Universal* install disk, install it in VMware, spruce it up with apps and so forth, then export it for use on a *real* computer. With all the drivers there already it shouldn't be too big a deal. Documentation exists for doing this (V2P) at the VMware site.

Also, found an interesting tool called "Windows Updates Downloader" here. It does what it says.

Another attempt to create a universla install disk for XP which is both up-to-date and includes a variety of extra functionality. I'm using the following apps:
nLiteOS
RyanVM Integrator and integrator packs
WMP11Slipstreamer
DriverPacks has an app for backing up/slipstreaming drivers in existing installs as well as provides a series of downloads of driver packs that can be used to slip in to an install disk. I've downloaded all of the available packs as of today.
DriverGrabber - see previous
Windows Post-Install Wizard is an app to run after the install is done. It is a user driven menu-ed app that runs a series of installers.

Some cool extensions are available at http://ryanvm.net/ . I'm adding some to my initial attempt, including CD/DVD burning apps, hardware monitoring apps and so forth.

To do:
1) slip WMP11 in to source tree (ripped XP SP2 disk)
2) slip IE7 in to source
3) Run RyanVM Integrator to integrate the update and custom packs
4) integrate the driver packs in to tree
5) run nliteos to create the ISO
6) do test installs in VMware,VirtualBox, Paralles, Mac mini, lab machines etc. (get Ehsan and DCST to try it, too)
follow-up task: if needed, run drivergrabber on all machines to get any custom drivers that the driver packs may not have in them

NOTE: I found a wrapper app called AutoImage that apparently sequences the operations of the above apps in a handy way. I'm trying to make it work now, but Casper is becoming flaky