Unattended Installation of Operating Systems (UNIOOS)

Overview
Installation Method in Detail
Download
Recommended Utilities
Contact

Overview

It's possible to install many operating systems (OS) without user intervention if the specific OS supports it or it's system partition can be cloned. As OSes have newer and newer versions, the need to deploy preinstalled systems is high. Installation can be done with a single floppy featuring special utilities like a Boot Manager (BM) and command line or errorlevel driven utilities.
The floppy contains a special boot manager, which runs before any OS specific code.
You can use this floppy image to create a bootable UNIOOS CD-ROM, because no writing operation to the boot device is performed.

The next figure shows the basic idea:

Installation Method in Detail

The installation is divided into phases. A phase counter is installed in a dedicated sector of the harddisk.

The UNIOOS Boot Manager Stage

The first boot device in the system BIOS must be either the floppy drive (if you use a floppy disk) or the CD-ROM drive (if you burn the floppy image to a CD-ROM), so the system boots using the installation floppy.
The OS intepentant UNIOOS BM runs first and verifies the phase counter.
If no phase information found or phase counter is 1, UNIOOS BM gives control to the installation floppy.
If phase counter is 2, UNIOOS BM gives control to the active primary partition on the first harddisk.

Partitioning and Formatting Stage

At this stage, UNIOOS BM gives control to the floppy. The OS on the floppy executes config.sys and autoexec.bat files. The default OS on the floppy is FreeDOS.
A special utility (chkphase.com) in autoexec.bat gives a proper errorlevel after examining and setting the proper phase:

if no phase information found,
1. installs phase information signature
2. sets phase counter to 1
3. exits with errorlevel 0
if phase counter is 1,
1. increases phase counter to 2
2. exits with errorlevel 1
if phase counter is invalid, exits with errorlevel 2
if any error occours, exits with errorlevel 255

Based on the returned chkphase.com errorlevel, autoexec.bat can decide what must be done:

if errorlevel is 0,
1. delete all partitions
2. create proper partition scheme
3. reboot
If errorlevel is 1,
1. format partition(s)
2. begin OS installation
3. reboot if necessary
If errorlevel is 2, display an error message and stop

Operating System Installation Stage

Two method exist to clone a predefined system. The user can decide which is preferred.

The deployed systems will be installed using the installation set of the specific OS. The set can be on a hard disk partition, CD-ROM or network file server.
Pros: can be used on computers with different hardware.
Contras: slow, as every step of OS installation must be taken.
The deployed systems will be generated using an image of a previously installed system. The image can be on a hard disk partition, CD-ROM or network file server.
Pros: much faster; phase 2 is not needed
Contras: needs a third party cloning utility; can be used only on computers with the same hardware (RAM size, processor speed, HD space may vary).

Download

Click here to download the compressed UNIOOS floppy image. Uncompress it and write the image to a floppy disk using Winimage or Rawrite. The UNIOOS floppy contains a specialized boot sector, so simply copying the utilities will not work. To clone a UNIOOS floppy, you must use the floppy image, or a disk duplication utility.

Recommended Utilities

Aefdisk - command line driven partitioning utility
Shareware product of Nagy Daniel
Norton Ghost - disk/partition cloning utility
Commercial product of Symantec Inc.

Contact

Contact Nagy Daniel if you're interested.