Simple CD Deployment of XPE

[jfradley]

This sounds like it should be easy but I can't seem to
find a legitiment solution. Maybe I'm approaching it in
the wrong way.

My company builds inspection machines (normally using QNX
but for a few specialized using XPE). We build the machine
house, load up all the sfotware and ship it. That's easy.
When the customer gets the machine they need to have a
installation CD to perform re-installation for disaster
recovery and software updates. It's this that isn't clear.

They and we need a installation disk that you pop into the
CD drive, boot off of it, backs up the previous OS image
to different partition and loads the new OS image onto the
main. The CD is then removed, the machine is re-booted and
it starts from the harddrive thereafter.

What do I need to accomplish this? WinPE? If so can I
distribute WinPE and XPE on the same CD to customers
without violating any license agreements?

Or should make boot-able CD from a DOS boot floppy, such
as a Win98 Startup disk and use sdi2hd? Can I distribute
the Win98 disk in CD format?

Or should I have two XPE OSes on the same CD? The first OS
a El-Torito used for the sole purpose of performing the
install of the second.

Has anybody out there tried to accomplosh something
similar?

Thanks for any insight.

Joe

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Hi,

I'm using XPe and do RAM boot from CD to run our install/update wizard.

This should not violate license agreement, but who knows?
I'll let others worry about that.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Guest]

Slobodan,

So you maintain 2 OS builds for your device? Do you have
an easy wasy to go about this to minimize the work?

Joe

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

Yes two completely different builds.

But I have to maintain only one build since I have functional deployment
build.

Boot loader loads SDI image from hidden part of CD to memory.
And transfers control to startrom. Then XPe boot from RAM.
After that you need to wait for PnP to complete loading new hardware.
And XPe starts my InstallLoader app, that have only one purpose and it is to
locate disk that contains our InstallWizard and to run it.
After that InstallWizard does the rest.

So basically I have one CDXPe.ima file that is used to boot XPe from CD.
And install data and wizard can be added to normal visible section of CD.

I'm afraid that there is no easy way to do this, since you need custom
bootloader, SDI file and to merge them in ima file.
But it is easy to maintain upgrades since CDXPe.ima is constant and you need
to record only new image data or/and install wizard.


Regards,
Slobodan

 

[jfradley]

Thanks for the info Slobodan.

-----Original Message-----
Yes two completely different builds.

But I have to maintain only one build since I have functional deployment
build.

Boot loader loads SDI image from hidden part of CD to memory.
And transfers control to startrom. Then XPe boot from RAM.
After that you need to wait for PnP to complete loading new hardware.
And XPe starts my InstallLoader app, that have only one purpose and it is to
locate disk that contains our InstallWizard and to run it.
After that InstallWizard does the rest.

So basically I have one CDXPe.ima file that is used to boot XPe from CD.
And install data and wizard can be added to normal visible section of CD.

I'm afraid that there is no easy way to do this, since you need custom
bootloader, SDI file and to merge them in ima file.
But it is easy to maintain upgrades since CDXPe.ima is constant and you need
to record only new image data or/and install wizard.


Regards,
Slobodan






.