CT manage deployments on our custom hardware by issuing fully tested images that can be deployed onto the hardware. These images are deployed using the process described in this article.
Creating a CT Imager USB Drive
You will need a USB stick which is large enough to contain around 400Mb of operating system and the image files. The images are likely to be quite large, we would normally suggest at least 32GB. Although the drive will not be formatted during this process, we would recommend not having other files and folder on the USB stick.
The USB drive should be formatted to FAT otherwise the following scripts cannot make the device bootable. These instructions rely on a Windows PC.
Step 1 Download the iso file from here. Please note that this download does not contain the images themselves, but these can be downloaded and added to the drive later.
Step 2 Download and install Rufus
Step 3 Open Rufus. Select the USB drive you want to install the CT Imager on as Device, set the Boo selection to the iso you have just downloaded and give the Volume label a friendly name.
When you click START, you may get several warnings regarding loss of the data on the USB drive and suggested boot options and files. You can agree/okay/yes to all of them.
Once successful the USB stick is now bootable. At this point it still doesn not have any images on it. See the next section for the list of available images.
Adding New Images to the CT Imager
To add new images to the CT Imager, just download the image from the links below and extract it into the ‘images’ folder on the USB stick. The folder structure must be kept the same as shown in the screens shot.
Current Images
Deploying Images Using the CT Imager
With the device powered off, insert the CT Imager USB stick.
Power on the device and interrupt the boot to access the BIOS. Different devices have different interrupt keys and BIOS’ but once in the BIOS select the boot device as either the USB or UEFI options listed.
If this is the first time the process has been run on your machine, you may need to enable legacy boot, disable secure boot and change other BIOS setting to allow booting from USB devices.
Once loaded, there are two deployment options available. The system will default to the G1 deployment after 30 seconds unless you interrupt the timer using the up/down keys. Due to the way the options are pre-seeded into the process, you have to choose whether the your imaging stick will appear sda1 or sdb1. If you choose the wrong option, all that happens it that a mount error is reported and you have to start over.
Option 1: Deploy and image from sda1 (for use with CTUK G1 hardware)
This option assumes the standard CT hardware and drive allocations, specifically that the USB stick will be sda1 because the RAID is an NVME drive. You will only be prompted for the name of the image you want to use, and the destination drive. The process will fail if the the USB drive is not sda1. In this case and you will have to use the option below.
Option 2: Deploy and image from sdb1
The option will work if the hardware appears as sda1. This will make your USB stick sdb1 and the image folder should be mounted from there.
If neither options work, it is possible to use the fully manual deployment method. Select READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE CONTINUING and select Manual Mode. Follow the prompts on screen, they are well annotated.
Once selected, the process will re-image your device with the image.
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