K2000 Post Installation Task Testing on Virtual Boxes
Hello,
I am doing some rigirous trial and error testing of a variety of K2000 Post Installation Tasks. My question is has anyone come across an optimal setup for doing so? Currently I am running a few virtual boxes but I have not found a decent place to snapshot so that I do not have to go through an entire OS installation. I figure all of the information is pulled in the boot environment, and taking a snapshot there only saves a few minutes max. Is there a better mixture approach such as just uploading an image and restoring the image and then testing the post installation tasks? Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thank you for your time,
Andrew
Answers (2)
via cserrins: "I add a midlevel bat task with the word "pause" in the commandline. When the deployment gets to this point, we pause on the command prompt and this is where I snapshot. Now I can reorder my tasks, etc etc, and the deployment will pick up all the new stuff because it is written to the drive after the midlevel task section."
The first suggestion is definitely a good one. However, can become work if you want to reorder tasks around or add/subtract tasks.
I add a midlevel bat task with the word "pause" in the commandline. When the deployment gets to this point, we pause on the command prompt and this is where I snapshot.
Now I can reorder my tasks, etc etc, and the deployment will pick up all the new stuff because it is written to the drive after the midlevel task section.
All the postinstall tasks are kicked off by Windows setup completing. I suppose you could take a snapshot at that point, and then modify the contents of the C:\KACE folder with your changes if it's possible to modify the file structure within the snapshot. If not you could take a snapshot after the second reboot (when drivers have finished installing, and before Windows setup continues) then boot into the KBE to make your changes.
Comments:
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Snapshotting right after the second reboot appears to work and saves a little bit of time. I am going to do some testing with your suggestion of modifying the contents of the KACE folder, that sounds like a promising solution, not sure why I didn't think of it. :) Thanks for the good information! - ais4ocho 12 years ago
