UPDATE: I’ve successfully mirrored the site over to the VPS, so as soon as the name server changes propagate, the migration will be complete.

If you require a higher assurance certificate, for $49 you can have your identity validated for two years through which you can issue any number of certificates. For an additional $49, you can get your organization’s identity validated. EV Certs are also available.

I think it’s about time someone’s done something like this. I mean really, how much effort could it be to issue minimal assurance SSL certs?

That’s right, for Windows. Windows 1.0 to be exact.

Apparently someone in my family bought a Zenith Z-100 or Z-200 computer in 1986 which came bundled with Windows 1. This machine was almost IBM Compatible but not 100%. However, the disks that it came with work fine on an IBM Compatible machine.

According to the manual, I need an 8086 or 8088 with 320K memory, two floppy drives, and a CRT. It also says that I can consult the Software Consultation computer bulletin board by modem at (616) 982-3503 if I need help.

For the heck of it, I dug out my 5.25″ floppy drive and copied the disks into disk images and set it up in VirtualBox. And it’s fast. In fact, it loads so quickly that I don’t even get to see the Windows splash screen. I’m going to have to look for some slightly more authentic hardware to run it on. I think I’ve got an original Pentium 65MHz box somewhere around here. I know I used to have one. It was my first PC.

Some things never change. Notepad hasn’t changed (much) in 25 years:

OMG, I can multitask!

Paint’s changed a lot:

I guess there wasn’t all that much to control back then:

Don’t forget to end your Windows Session:

In the past, we’ve always booted the PCs with Ghost Boot CDs which allowed them to connect to the GhostCast Session. We didn’t have good luck with Ghost Console working properly, so we always did it this way. (Though I really want to start using WDS). However, recently, we acquired 100 notebook PCs that don’t have optical drives. Obviously, this was a problem. We were either going to have to use a USB CD drive or a USB floppy and neither would have been pretty for imaging 100 PCs.

There are several ways of network booting for Ghost. I’m going to go over two ways. One is with all free or shareware software and the other, is the way we ended up doing it and that’s with 3Com Boot Services since Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate includes it. Let me say that that software is a piece of work. It has a UI dating from the Windows 3.11 days. However, it actually works, when you get around its quirkiness. (I picked the 3Com route because you can configure the PXE server to run in DHCP Proxy mode which was critical since we don’t have any control over the DHCP server.)

Instead of me going over everything with the free/shareware software way, let me just provide a link. His instructions are great and got me a working setup. (Just don’t use any of the included software, it’s a few years out of date). Link from Damian Jackson at Lilydale Heights College. Point of Interest: The only drive letter that the Ghost Boot Wizard is willing to work with for creating the floppy image is A:/. You might need to disable your system’s actual floppy drive if you’re not using real disks (or don’t have physical access to the server). That took me hours to figure out.

It’s also probably not worth me going over the 3Com Boot Services way since it comes with a perfectly good manual on the CD. However, there are a few things which are covered in the manual, but not inherently obvious if you don’t read the manual. The rest is straight forward and you probably won’t have to read the manual. This is the brief version of everything.

First off, you need to create a Network Boot Image using the Ghost Boot Wizard. You can probably figure this out. Make sure to use the PXE Network Driver. I made two images. One has no command line parameters (which I called Ghost Manual) and the other has the parameters “-ja=[sessionname] -sure” where [sessionname] is equal to the name we use for our GhostCasting sessions. This I called Ghost Automatic since it automatically connects to the session.

Now you need to prep 3Com Boot Services. On your Start Menu under 3Com Boot Services is the 3Com Boot Image Editor. Open that up and select “Create a PXE menu boot file”. Create your menu file. Here’s what mine looks like.

PXE Boot Menu in 3Com Boot Image Editor

When you’re done go ahead and save it. You can name it if you like or just leave it as “mba.pxe”. The next step is to edit the BOOTPTAB file. Which you can do by opening the appropriately named BOOTPTAB Editor. This whole BOOTPTAB thing is a little clunky. The default BOOTPTAB file has a couple of entries. Go ahead and nuke those. Now, go to Edit and Add Host. This is where it gets a little weird. This is how you fill it out:

Adding a new host into BOOTPTAB

Yes, those are really question marks. You can also specify a MAC address, but putting in all question marks serves as a wildcard to allow all clients. Hit “Ok.” Now your BOOTPTAB file should look like this:

Sample Configuration

Go ahead and save that. Now, you can launch the PXE Server and the TFTP Server. (Both must be running. You can make them services if you’d like.) When you first launch the PXE Server it will check to see if the PC you’re running it on is a DHCP server. If it’s not, it will ask you if you’d like it to be a DHCP Proxy. Tell it that you would. You’re all done on the server side.

Now, go to one of your client PCs and tell it to boot from LAN. If you did everything correctly, you’ll get a menu that looks something like this (depending on your configuration).

PXE Boot Menu

Happy Ghosting!

So, in the next few days, I’m going to force myself to blog about a couple of things.

1. Terminal Services: Yes, I will actually post that guide to setting up TS and making it work.
2. Network Booting Ghost
3. Doing a network boot when you don’t control the DHCP server.
3. SSL Certs are a PITA and kind of stupid
4. Windows 7 and 2008R2
5. Books
6. TI Nspire CAS stuff

Within the next week or so, I’m going to switch my primary PC to Windows 7 and we’ll see how it goes. I’ll write more later.

If you have snapshots on the virtual drive you can tell ESXi to make the change. ESXi tells you it resized the disk but it never actually does it. (It doesn’t give an error message, it just doesn’t work). I’d recommend shutting down your VM just in case, though you’re supposed to be able to do it to a live VM the thought is a bit scary for me.

Go to your VM’s Getting Started page in Infrastructure Client and click on “Edit virtual machine settings”. On the left side, there’s an option that says “Hard Disk” and a number. Click that. That brings up this menu:

VMWare ESXi Properties Menu. VHD Settings

On the right, you’ll notice that you can adjust the disk capacity. You can make the drive larger (or smaller) as needed by adjusting the New Size tab. It’s not recommended that you mess with any of the other settings as changing them can confuse your operating system and prevent it from booting. That’s it. You’re done, now you just need to resize the partition so that your OS can make use of the new space.

(While it may seem like I’ve been bashing ESXi, it really is a great product. Once you get it running and figure out its quirks it’s one of the best virtualization solutions around. And it’s free. For what more can you ask?)

I’m going to document a complete setup in the coming days.