sebastian.rother@jpberlin.de wrote:
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> I would like to know if it's possible to use OpenBSD as RIS-Server to
> install WIndows via Network. I played around with this for 2 weeks now but
> I can't figure out how it gets done. Something is missing (maybe a
> dhcp-option?! :( )

Are you able to boot to your PXE server?  That's the first step.  Make 
sure your PXE server can get DHCP requests, even if it's not the DHCP 
server.  If nothing else, you should (in theory) be able to copy over 
the REMOTEINSTALL tree from your RIS server and share it via tftp and 
Samba and make something work.

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> Also I face problems to provide VistaPE (it wont realy boot, bootloader
> comes up but then the bcd seams to be corrupted in soem way).

Vista is a different animal to install.  I haven't worked on remote 
installing Vista (I'm working with Server 2008, relatively the same) 
booting from a Server 2003 SP2 with MS RIS/WDS hybrid-mode installed. 
RIS installing 2000/XP formats the disk and copies files over from the 
file system and starts setup.  WDS installing Vista/2008 formats the 
disk and unpacks the WIM file onto the disk and starts setup.  You won't 
be able to just copy the Vista DVD to your server and do a remote 
install, you'll need to download the BDD2007 and/or WAIK kit to make 
network-installable WIM files.

My biggest hurdles moving from RIS to WDS were adding network drivers to 
the boot image for DL360 G5 servers (the normal drivers won't work) and 
moving my skill set from winnt.sif (2003) to unattend.xml (2008).

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> So if somebody here also administrates Widnows-Servers (I don't know that
> much about 'em :/) and knows how to emulate a RIS please tell me. I would
> love to replace the Windows Box (the Imaging-Server was already replaced).

The "unattended" project mentioned earlier looks good, I haven't used 
it.  I don't know if it'll do Vista installs, if that's a requirement. 
I guess my question is, if you have a working RIS solution, why not 
continue using it?  You seem to already be a Windows shop on the 
desktops, it doesn't seem like having a Windows server around would be 
that terrible.