How does the preserve option of Nterprise Branch Office work?

Articles and Tips: qna

09 Dec 2004

If you are installing on the same hardware, or at least the same hard drive, you will get a menu with the Preserve option. When the CD boots, it first looks for the D:\RDWFILE file (assuming that your bootable CD is in drive C: and the boot partition of your hard drive is D:). RDWFILE (no extension) is a small file placed on the root of the boot partition when the appliance is first imaged. The first time you boot from the hard drive, this file is deleted.

In other words, if RDWFILE exists, the imaging CD "knows" that this is a newly installed Nterprise Branch Office (NBO) appliance, so it will not attempt to overwrite the existing configuration. In this scenario, you will not get any boot menu at all; NBO will simply load.

If D:\RDWFILE does not exist, then the CD determines whether or not this machine is already an NBO appliance. If it is, then you will get a menu giving you the option to image by [P]reserving the existing data partition and settings, [D]eleting the existing data partition and starting from scratch, or [E]xiting the image process and booting normally.

If the machine has never been imaged to an NBO appliance, you simply see a warning that you are about to delete all partitions on the machine and are asked to confirm this action.

If you don't see any menu at all, you have probably never booted this machine from the hard drive (i.e., the bootable CD has always been in the CD drive). Delete the D:\RDWFILE file, and all should be well.

* Originally published in Novell Connection Magazine

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