Boot series scripting / test cycling / automation

Post your suggestions here if there are new features or applications that you would like added to the Ultimate Boot CD.

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nbrookins
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Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:09 am

Boot series scripting / test cycling / automation

#1 Post by nbrookins » Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:34 am

Hi all. Looks like a great tool.

In the past I maintained a similar but much more limited boot cd for my employer that would burn-in / test new systems. It booted from one dos floppy image and would run tools in sequence. Occasionally it would need to reboot, to keep track of what step it was on it would write a quick flag file to the hard drive. In this way we could have it run RAM Exam, then spinrite, then partition the drive, reboot, run various other dos tests, reboot, then ghost the proper image, reboot, etc..

This was easy back then - it was before NTFS, and all the good tools were in DOS. Things are a little different now obviously. I'd love to add similar capability here for a current project and share with everyone.

The big question - after loading a kernel or image, how do you return to the menu like some apps can? (x86test for example) Does anyone know of small utility that could be run from either a linux or dos script to return to the menu / force to boot back from cd? This would be needed so a small app could check the current 'stage' and then return to the menu.

If that was possible I could use it with UBCD on USB, and keep track of the current stage by carefully modifying the menu config on the USB drive. It would then be possible to make a script that would run one app/img after another, rebooting in between.

I've thought of a few ways to accomplish this with a pxe boot, by determining the img to boot based on MAC address - but not all systems will boot from network.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated, if I come up with anything I'll certainly share it in case others are interested.

-Nick

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