Leveraging OSChooser
The INPUT capability opens up amazing possibilities: You can automate any customization that you need to perform from one Win2K Pro installation to the next. Do you need to set a fixed IP address for each Win2K Pro system that you roll out? Do you need to use a customized naming scheme for your corporate standards? Simply prompt the installing user for the information, put the values into environment variables, then reference those variables in the appropriate location in the template file.
Perhaps you need to set up some of your Win2K Pro systems with personal Web services and Microsoft FrontPage extensions. However, you won't need Web services on all systems, so you need to modify an OSChooser screen to ask the user whether to install Web services, then modify the unattended installation template to use the answer that the installing user provides. Let's walk through this hypothetical example.
Step 1: Modify an OSChooser screen. To prompt a user for input about whether to install Web services, you need to modify one of the existing OSChooser screens by adding an input field for the question. For this example, we'll modify the custom.osc file.
Listing 1, page 81, shows that this modification requires only one simple change to the custom.osc file. The code at callout A in Listing 1 shows the added INPUT statement. OSChooser will present the information from this edited file on a screen, including the customized question, "Web Services On or Off?"
Note that the INPUT statement in Listing 1's edited file refers to a value of "WEB". OSChooser stores data it collects from the user by placing the value in an environment variable. When the installing user enters a value in this field, OSChooser will populate the %WEB% environment variable with the value the user provides.
Step 2: Modify the template file. If we were to stop after this first step, nothing fancy would happen. An OSChooser screen would prompt users for an answer about whether to install Web services on the target system, but RIS wouldn't pass the answer to the target system. To do that task, RIS must reference the %WEB% value in the installation process's template file.
You accomplish this task by going to the \RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\<imagename>\i386\templates directory and editing the ristndrd.sif file. Search for the file's [Components] section, and add the following lines:
iis_common=%WEB%
iis_inetmgr=%WEB%
iis_pwmgr=%WEB%
iis_www=%WEB%
fp=%WEB%
These values might already exist in some ristndrd.sif files, but by default, the values are probably set to Off. In a Win2K unattended installation file, the correct syntax for an answer must be either On or Off. (This syntax requirement explains the phrasing of the question on the OSChooser screen as Web Services On or Off?) RIS will paste the answer that installing users provide into the ristndrd .sif file as RIS copies the file onto the target computer.
Step 3: Run. After you modify the OSChooser screen to capture an environment variable and edit the appropriate template file, all you need to do is run the standard RIS installation process. When you launch the RIS install, OSChooser will display the standard Client Installation Wizard screens. Choosing the Custom Installation option when you launch the RIS install directs OSChooser to display your modified custom.osc screen.
If you've done everything correctly, installing users will see an input field on the screen displaying Web Services On or Off? and they'll need to enter a value of On or Off before continuing with the installation process. After users complete the installation, their systems will have standard Win2K Pro installations with Web services installed or not installed, as each user chose.
This example is rather simple. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the power and flexibility that are available to you through easy file-editing techniques. You can perform many per-user or per-machine customizations (e.g., for IP addresses, for administrator passwords, for Telephony API—TAPI—area codes) at the beginning of the Win2K Pro installation, eliminating the need to go back and set those options.
So Many Options
RIS is a great tool for deploying Win2K, and by customizing RIS, you can further extend the tool's capability. The key to customizing your installations is understanding which options are available in the Win2K unattended installation file. Table 1 shows which options OSChooser already uses. You, therefore, need to avoid using these values when you customize your RIS-based installations.
For further information about options for unattended installations, I recommend Microsoft's "Windows 2000 Guide to Unattended Setup" document, which you'll find in the deploy.cab file in the \support\tools directory of your Win2K CD-ROM. This file shows every option that you can customize during installation—all you need to do is identify the values that are important to your environment and modify the OSChooser screens to collect the necessary information from the installing user.
But what about installing additional applications, such as Office or Microsoft's service packs? Stay tuned for future Superior RIS articles.