Update Configurator Help System
Previous Up Contents Home Next

Chapter 3. Boot Diskette
One of the advantages of Update Configurator and UPDATE is the ability to use a single boot diskette for all error recovery and new installations. The boot diskette is a standard network boot diskette with the DOS programs SMARTDRV.EXE, FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, CHOICE.COM and SYS.COM that calls the batch file BOOT.BAT that is copied to your UPDATE directory by the Update Configurator install program. BOOT.BAT should be given your configuration directory as an argument.

Creating the Boot Diskette

First create a DOS boot diskette that will load your network drivers, logon to your server and setup the correct drive letters for access to your configuration directory, your UPDATE directory and your archive directories. The boot diskette will not need write access to any of these directories.

You should make sure that the CONFIG.SYS file loads HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE (with the argument NOEMS) and have the line 'DOS=HIGH, UMB' to leave as much memory as possible for UPDATE. You should also try to load your network drivers to high memory.

If you have room on the disk add the files SMARTDRV.EXE (from your windows directory) and FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, CHOICE.COM and SYS.COM (from the COMMAND subdirectory of you windows directory). If you don't have enough room on the disk put these files in a directory on your server. In any case load SMARTDRV.EXE from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the diskette and make sure that the PATH environment variable includes the directory where the rest of the files are located.

Add lines to make your UPDATE directory the current directory (e.g. 'F:' and 'CD \UPDATE') and finish with the line 'BOOT.BAT <ConfigDir>' where <ConfigDir> is the path to your configuration directory.

You are done.

Using the Boot Diskette

Booting a workstation with this diskette will bring up a menu with four choices:
  1. fdisk
  2. format
  3. format+UPDATE
  4. UPDATE
Choosing 'fdisk' will run fdisk (whow!), choosing 'format' will let you format any drive from C: to G:. Formatting drive C: will also put the system files on the drive. Choosing 'format+UPDATE' will do the above followed by the below item. Choosing UPDATE will first try to locate the workstations setup in the configuration (by running RUNMAC). If that succeeds it will just update the harddisk to reflect the archive on the server. If it does not succeed a setup screen will appear (the RUNSEL program) where you can choose the workstation you want to inherit the contents of your harddisk from and give a new name, description and IP address. When this is done the harddisk will be copied from the relevant archive and the workstation will be booted. On the first boot all Update Configurator files will be removed from the harddisk - you have to run Update Configurator if you want to configure the workstation to be maintained by Update Configurator.
Previous Up Contents Home Next
Last modified 4. August 1998 by Steen Varsted