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ZENworks 7 SP1 Imaging on USB

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In Brief

Start the ZENworks 7 imaging from a USB thumbdrive instead of the boot CD.

Vitals

Product Categories:
  • ZENworks
    • Functional Categories:
  • USB Drive
    • Updated:16 Oct 2007
    File Size:40MB
    License:See License information below
    Download:/coolsolutions/tools/downloads/zen71usb.zip
    Publisher:Rich Bryant

    Disclaimer

    Please read the note from our friends in legal before using this file.


    Details

    License Information:

    I have modified a great tool by Teppo Fahlstedt, to install ZENworks 7 imaging on a USB device. This will allow you to start the ZENworks 7 imaging from a USB thumbdrive instead of the boot cd. Everything is provided in the Zip file to create the USB. It works the same as the boot cd, but on USB. This is great as it allows for a person to change the settings.txt or add files into the addfiles folder, or change it how they want it without having to burn cd's over and over again. Plus the thumb drive is handier to carry around than a cd, just make sure your computer can boot from a USB device.

    I would like to make sure that the proper people get recognized for the parts that I used in order to make this work: Teppo Fahlstedt for the original ZEN 6.5 USB installer, cgerke (I don't know his name, this was all I found on the wiki) for the USB script, and Zendude for his posts in the forums. Without them, I couldn't have gotten this to work.

    Updated October 16, 2007

    This is an update to the Zen7usb tool that uses the latest ZenWorks 7 sp1 HP6 boot cd. I have modified the ZENworks 7 sp1 HP6 Imaging CD software to run on USB storage devices and created an installer tool that installs ZENworks 7 sp1 HP6 Imaging on USB devices.

    Some items of note on this release:

    Be sure to read the Readme.txt. Along with the boring standard info, there could be some clues to help you out with any troubles you are having.

    This tool will not work on all usb flash drives. I have tested it on several, and there are some that simply will not work. I have had better success with the 512mb and smaller USB flash drives.

    Not all usb flash drives will boot a pc for imaging. This is due to the limitations of the PC. Make sure that the BIOS settings are set correctly to allow booting to USB.

    If you find a pc that will not boot using the flash drive, try using a USB hard drive. Use my notes on imaging using an external USB hard drive found here: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/18872.html.

    Note that the amount of space needed for the boot partition has increased, so your boot partition will need to be larger than 30mb, I would suggest 50mb or larger.

    Save yourself some time, create multiple settings files so the drive can travel from PC to PC depending on the need. Have one settings.txt using DHCP, and another hard set IP, also one syslinux.cfg for sda1 and another for sdb1. Simply rename the file that you need and you are off and running.

    Updated April 3, 2007

    I've received feedback on getting this to work on large USB hard drives for disconnected imaging. Here are my steps to follow in order to use a large USB external hard drive to store your images and do disconnected imaging with large images. See: ZENworks 7 Imaging from USB drives for large images for the step-by-step instructions.

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    Reader Comments

    • Would be useful if the zip file wasn't corrupt. After downloading, WinZip tells me the file is corrupt.
      Reply It upzips fine for me. Please try again.
    • Tried and Tried... I was on the right track... This is a great COOL Solution!
    • Manual install worked nicely as designed using IZArc. Nice writeup.
    • This sounds truly great. However, what purpose has the email.jpg file in zen7usb/data/addfiles/bin ?
    • Really nice USB solution however, it seems to have an issue with SATA HDs. I have to manually assign a partition to be able to restore an image
    • If image is greater that 2Gb in size, they can easily be split using Tools/Split Image in IMPEXP.EXE from Zen 7 SP1 HP3. (It may be available in earlier releases.)
    • Maybe I'm missing something but when we boot with the drive we get Boot ERROR error loading OS. Can you shed some light on this??? If we can get this to work this will be the greatest. Al 530-896-8403 Thanks
    • Great with v7. After HP5 cannot find ZEN install source ...is there an update for HP5? Would be great to read the nitty and gritty.
    • Too bad the cdrom.s and kernel do not support files larger than 2 Gb. Most of our images are larger and I would like to image from DVD somehow. I can only burn UDF filesystem if I need files that big :(
    • Had to modify the linuxrc.config file for e1000 device. Added 'newid="0x8088 0x104a, e1000"' to work with particular laptop. Works great!
    • Everything boots fine, but the NIC never gets initialized

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