Mirror image and drive separated installation method of diskless system and diskless system

By separating the mirroring of the diskless system from the driver and realizing automatic installation of hardware drivers, the problem of different hardware usage needs in cloud gaming scenarios is solved, and the automatic adaptation of mirroring and user experience is achieved.

CN119645437APending Publication Date: 2025-03-18SHENZHEN CLOUDSKY TECH CO LTD
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Patent Information

Application Number
CN202411643558.1
Authority / Receiving Office
CN · China
Patent Type
Applications(China)
Current Assignee / Owner
Filing Date
2024-11-18
Publication Date
2025-03-18

AI Technical Summary

Technical Problem

The existing unified standard disk-free mirroring system is difficult to adapt to the usage needs of different hardware in cloud gaming scenarios, which brings inconvenience to promotion, upgrading and maintenance, and affects the user experience.

Method used

By separating the image of the diskless system and installing the driver, standard diskless images are made and stored in the cloud, multiple hardware driver resource installation packages are made based on different hardware drivers, and intelligently matched and installed through network connections to realize automatic installation of hardware drivers.

Benefits of technology

It realizes that the diskless system mirroring automatically adapts to all hardware types, reduces the need to frequently produce mirroring for different hardware, facilitates promotion, upgrades and maintenance, and improves user experience.

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Abstract

The invention discloses a mirror image and driver separated installation method of a diskless system and the diskless system, relates to the technical field of cloud games, and solves the technical problem that a diskless mirror image system with a unified standard is difficult to adapt to different hardware use requirements of the cloud games. The method comprises the steps of making a standard diskless mirror image and storing the standard diskless mirror image in a cloud; making a plurality of hardware drive resource installation packages based on different hardware drives and storing the hardware drive resource installation packages in the cloud; the diskless host is in network connection with the cloud, an operation system is installed, and the hardware model of the diskless host is determined; matching the hardware model of the diskless host with a hardware drive resource installation package, and downloading a corresponding hardware resource installation package from the cloud; and the diskless host performs hardware PNP drive installation based on the hardware resource installation package, and loads the hardware PNP drive in a memory to complete the installation of the hardware drive. The operating system mirror image and the hardware drive are decoupled, intelligent matching installation of the hardware drive is carried out by the PNP drive in the startup process, and the use requirements of the cloud game are better met.
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Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention relates to the field of cloud gaming technology, and in particular to a method for installing a diskless system's image and driver separately, and a diskless system. Background Art

[0002] The operating system is usually installed on the local hard disk for "disk-based booting". However, in cloud gaming scenarios, in order to reduce the cost of hard disk procurement, facilitate hard disk content management, and prevent users from writing unsafe content to the hard disk, the computer usually does not have a local hard disk, and the operating system needs to be loaded and run from a remote server for "diskless booting". Compared with ordinary computers, diskless hosts can start and run the operating system without any external storage device support. The way to implement diskless booting is generally for the diskless host to download some necessary files in the operating system from the server, such as boot programs, configuration files, kernels, and image files, etc., to the memory of the diskless workstation, and then start the diskless host. All information in the diskless boot system during operation is stored in the memory. For the convenience of installation and configuration, the existing diskless boot system images generally use unified standard images.

[0003] The cloud gaming application field faces different user demands. The hardware configurations of bare metal nodes (i.e., physical machines deployed in computer rooms) vary. For example, the models and versions of hardware such as network cards and graphics cards vary, resulting in different hardware drivers. As a result, the image cloud cannot use a unified standard image to adapt to all hardware for diskless booting. Corresponding cloud images must be prepared for different hardware, which brings great challenges and pressure to the subsequent promotion, upgrade and maintenance.

[0004] In the process of implementing the present invention, the inventors found that there are at least the following problems in the prior art:

[0005] The existing unified standard diskless image system is difficult to adapt to the usage requirements of different hardware in cloud gaming scenarios, which brings inconvenience to promotion, upgrade and maintenance, and affects the user experience. Summary of the invention

[0006] The purpose of the present invention is to provide a diskless system image and driver separate installation method and diskless system, so as to solve the technical problem that the unified standard diskless image system in the prior art is difficult to adapt to the use requirements of different hardware in the cloud game scene, which brings inconvenience to promotion, upgrading and maintenance, and affects the user experience. The many technical effects that can be produced by the preferred technical solution among the many technical solutions provided by the present invention are described in detail below.

[0007] To achieve the above object, the present invention provides the following technical solutions:

[0008] The present invention provides a method for separating the installation of an image and a driver of a diskless system, which is used for separating the installation of the diskless image and the hardware driver, and comprises the following steps: S100: making a standard diskless image and storing it in the cloud; S200: making a plurality of hardware driver resource installation packages based on different hardware drivers and storing them in the cloud; S300: the diskless host is connected to the cloud through a network, the operating system is installed based on the standard diskless image, and the hardware model of the diskless host is determined; S400: matching the hardware driver resource installation package based on the hardware model of the diskless host, and after successful matching, the diskless host downloads the corresponding hardware resource installation package from the cloud; S500: the diskless host installs the hardware PNP driver based on the downloaded hardware resource installation package, and loads the package into the memory of the diskless host to complete the installation of the hardware driver.

[0009] Preferably, the S100 step specifically includes: S110: installing a Windows standard image; S120: removing some useless components in the Windows standard image to optimize the image settings; S130: importing private services into the optimized streamlined image; S140: importing the data of the image disk to obtain a standard diskless image and storing it in the cloud.

[0010] Preferably, in the step S130, the private service includes placeholder graphics card information of the placeholder graphics card, and the placeholder graphics card information is a piece of graphics card information that is incomplete but occupies a PCIe graphics card slot.

[0011] Preferably, the S200 step specifically includes: S210: downloading all driver installation packages based on multiple hardware types and multiple hardware models of all diskless computers; S220: extracting driver installation files and driver registry by parsing the driver installation package; S230: storing the driver installation files and driver registry in the cloud based on a private format as a driver resource package.

[0012] Preferably, the S300 step specifically includes: S310: the diskless host starts, and the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE program is run in the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI stage of the startup process; S320: the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE program obtains all the hardware of the diskless host through the interface scan provided by the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI; S330: determine the network card model and graphics card model of the diskless computer.

[0013] Preferably, the S400 step includes: S410: the diskless host reports the host number, and the corresponding network card model and graphics card model to the server program via TCP or HTTP; S420: the server program queries the driver resource package corresponding to the network card model and graphics card model stored in the cloud; S430: the server program respectively sends the driver resource packages corresponding to the network card model and graphics card model to the corresponding diskless host.

[0014] Preferably, in step S500, when the hardware PNP driver is installed, the operating system is notified through the hardware PNP driver that the graphics card of the diskless host is the placeholder graphics card; the hardware PNP driver installs graphics card resources according to the configuration file of the operating system, including the registry of the placeholder graphics card.

[0015] Preferably, in step S500, the hardware PNP driver is installed by bypassing the operating system self-check to install the graphics card driver, which specifically includes the following steps: S510: modifying the hardware ID of the diskless host graphics card to the hardware ID of the placeholder graphics card; S520: notifying the operating system that the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card is specified by the PNP driver; S530: modifying the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card to the instance ID of the placeholder graphics card.

[0016] Preferably, the hardware PNP driver is installed based on the hook technology.

[0017] A diskless system, used for running the image and driver separation installation method of a diskless system as described in any of the above items, comprising a diskless computer, a server, a server program and a cloud, wherein the diskless computers are multiple and are configured with different hardware, the server uses the server program to produce the standard diskless image and hardware driver resource installation package, and configures the diskless image and driver separation installation system, and the cloud stores the standard diskless image and hardware driver resource installation package; the diskless computer is communicatively connected to the server, the server program is set in the server, and the diskless computer and the server are both communicatively connected to the cloud.

[0018] Implementing one of the above technical solutions of the present invention has the following advantages or beneficial effects:

[0019] In the present invention, the operating system image and hardware driver of the diskless computer are decoupled and installed separately. The hardware driver does not need to be installed when the operating system image is made, but the PNP driver performs intelligent matching and installation during the boot process. When the client network card, graphics card and other hardware models and versions are various, it is no longer necessary to continuously make images for the hardware, and an image is automatically adapted to all hardware types. This better adapts to the use requirements of different hardware in the cloud game scene, facilitates promotion, upgrade and maintenance, and provides better user experience. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0020] In order to more clearly illustrate the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention, the following briefly introduces the drawings required for use in the description of the embodiments. It is obvious that the drawings described below are only some embodiments of the present invention. For those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained based on these drawings without creative work. In the drawings:

[0021] Figure 1 It is a flow chart of a method for installing a diskless system with separate images and drivers according to a first embodiment of the present invention;

[0022] Figure 2 This is a flow chart of step S100 in the method for installing the image and drive separately of a diskless system according to the first embodiment of the present invention;

[0023] Figure 3 This is a flowchart of step S200 in the method for installing the image and drive separately in a diskless system according to the first embodiment of the present invention;

[0024] Figure 4 This is a flow chart of step S300 in the method for installing the image and driver separately in a diskless system according to the first embodiment of the present invention;

[0025] Figure 5 This is a flow chart of step S400 in the method for installing the image and the driver separately of a diskless system according to the first embodiment of the present invention;

[0026] Figure 6 It is a flowchart of hardware PNP driver installation in a method for separating image and driver installation of a diskless system according to a first embodiment of the present invention;

[0027] Figure 7 It is a schematic diagram of hardware PNP driver intelligent matching graphics card in the image and driver separation installation method of a diskless system in an embodiment of the present invention;

[0028] Figure 8 It is a flowchart of the hardware PNP driver operation in the image and driver separation installation method of a diskless system according to an embodiment of the present invention;

[0029] Fig. 9 It is a schematic diagram of a hardware PNP driver bypassing an operating system self-check in a method for installing a diskless system with separate images and drivers according to an embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0030] In order to make the purpose, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention clearer, the various exemplary embodiments to be described below will refer to the corresponding drawings, which constitute a part of the exemplary embodiments, wherein various exemplary embodiments that may be used to implement the present invention are described. Unless otherwise indicated, the same numbers in different drawings represent the same or similar elements. The implementation methods described in the following exemplary embodiments do not represent all implementation methods consistent with the present disclosure. It should be understood that they are only examples of processes, methods, devices, etc. that are consistent with some aspects of the present disclosure as detailed in the attached claims, and other embodiments may also be used, or the embodiments listed herein may be modified in structure and function without departing from the scope and essence of the present invention.

[0031] In the description of the present invention, it should be understood that the terms "center", "longitudinal", "lateral", etc. indicate the orientation or positional relationship based on the drawings, which is only for the convenience of describing the present invention and simplifying the description, rather than indicating or implying that the elements referred to must have a specific orientation, be constructed and operated in a specific orientation. The terms "first", "second", etc. are only used for descriptive purposes, and cannot be understood as indicating or implying relative importance or implicitly indicating the number of technical features indicated. The term "multiple" means two or more. The terms "connected" and "connected" should be understood in a broad sense, for example, it can be a fixed connection, a detachable connection, an integral connection, a mechanical connection, an electrical connection, a communication connection, a direct connection, an indirect connection through an intermediate medium, and can be the internal connection of two elements or the interaction relationship between two elements. The term "and / or" includes any and all combinations of one or more related listed items. For those of ordinary skill in the art, the specific meanings of the above terms in the present invention can be understood according to the specific circumstances.

[0032] In order to illustrate the technical solution of the present invention, a specific embodiment is used below for description, and only the parts related to the embodiment of the present invention are shown.

[0033] Embodiment 1:

[0034] like Figure 1As shown, the present invention provides a method for separating the image and driver of a diskless system from installing the diskless image and the hardware driver separately, comprising the following steps: S100: making a standard diskless image and storing it in the cloud, the standard image is the image of the operating system, and the operation process is performed on the server; S200: making multiple hardware driver resource installation packages based on different hardware drivers and storing them in the cloud, the hardware driver is usually determined by the hardware type and the specific model; S300: the diskless host is connected to the cloud through a network, the operating system is installed based on the standard diskless image, and the hardware model of the diskless host is determined; S400: matching the hardware driver resource installation package based on the hardware model of the diskless host, and the diskless host downloads the corresponding hardware resource installation package from the cloud after the matching is successful; S500: the diskless host installs the hardware PNP driver based on the downloaded hardware resource installation package, and loads it into the memory of the diskless host to complete the installation of the hardware driver. In the method of the present invention, the operating system image and hardware driver of the diskless computer are decoupled and installed separately. The hardware driver does not need to be installed when the operating system image is made, but is intelligently matched and installed by the PNP driver during the boot process. When the client network card, graphics card and other hardware models and versions are various, it is no longer necessary to continuously make images for the hardware, and an image is automatically adapted to all hardware types. This better adapts to the use requirements of different hardware in the cloud game scene, facilitates promotion, upgrade and maintenance, and provides a better user experience.

[0035] As an optional implementation, Figure 2 As shown, step S100 specifically includes: S110: installing a Windows standard image, such as a commonly used win10 or win11 operating system, and the specific installation method can adopt the existing operating system installation method; S120: removing some useless components in the Windows image to optimize the image settings. In the cloud game scenario, some functions of the Windows system are not required. Therefore, removing these useless components can streamline the file size of the operating system, thereby reducing the file transfer size during the startup of the diskless host, speeding up the startup speed of the diskless host, and avoiding the occupation of the hardware resources of the diskless host by the above components, affecting the user experience. At the same time, the configuration of some operating systems can be modified according to the needs of the cloud game scenario to optimize the image; S130: importing private services into the optimized streamlined image, and private services are personalized configurations made by users according to specific usage scenarios, such as various pre-installed games in the cloud game scenario, diskless host management configuration software, etc.; S140: importing the data of the image disk (usually the system disk C drive), that is, packaging the file contents of all the image disks together to make an image file (such as using Norton Ghost and other software to operate), obtaining a standard diskless image and storing it in the cloud.

[0036] As an optional implementation, in step S130, the private service includes the placeholder graphics card information of the placeholder graphics card, which is a graphics card information that is incomplete but occupies the PCIe graphics card position. Thus, the graphics card driver of the operating system can be installed normally through the PNP driver. PNP (Plug and Play) means that when a new external device is added to the computer, the system automatically detects the peripheral devices and boards and automatically installs the device driver. It can be used as soon as it is plugged in without manual intervention. It is a technology that comes with Windows.

[0037] As an optional implementation, Figure 3 As shown, step S200 specifically includes: S210: based on multiple hardware types and multiple hardware models of all diskless computers, download all driver installation packages; this process is based on all the hardware of the existing diskless computer to ensure the integrity of the driver installation of the final driver resource package. S220: extract the driver installation file and the driver registry by parsing the driver installation package. After obtaining the two types of information, the correct installation of the hardware driver can be ensured; S230: store the driver installation file and the driver registry in the cloud based on a private format. The specific private format type can be selected according to the user's usage requirements as a driver resource package.

[0038] As an optional implementation, Figure 4As shown, step S300 specifically includes: S310: the diskless host starts, and the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE (Preboot eXecution Environment) program is run in the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) stage of the startup process; S320: the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE program obtains all the hardware of the diskless host through the interface scan provided by the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI. The UEFI stage will start the power-on self-test diagnosis process to check the integrity of the hardware components, so as to obtain all the hardware information in the diskless host. The hardware in the diskless host is mainly the network card and the graphics card; S330: determine the network card model and the graphics card model of the diskless computer. Specific network card models include Release network card: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8125&SUBSYS_7D191462&REV_05; specific graphics card models include NVIDIA graphics card: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2503&SUBSYS_208817AA&REV_A1. Network cards and graphics cards are usually PCIe devices, where VEN_10DE identifies the manufacturer ID, which is unique to each manufacturer and different manufacturer IDs are different; such as 8086 for Intel, 10DE for NVIDIA, 10EC for Release, etc.; DEV_2503: device ID, which can also be understood as the hardware model; SUBSYS_7D191462&REV_05: subsystem version, a minor version, which may be different in different batches of the same model; therefore, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2503&SUBSYS_208817AA&REV_A1 can be used together as the hardware ID of the graphics card. The hardware IDs of different hardware are different and are uniquely determined after the hardware leaves the factory.

[0039] As an optional implementation, Figure 5 As shown, step S400 includes: S410: the diskless host reports the host number, and the corresponding network card model and graphics card model to the server program through TCP or HTTP; S420: the server program queries the driver resource package corresponding to the network card model and graphics card model stored in the cloud; S430: the server program sends the driver resource packages corresponding to the network card model and graphics card model to the corresponding diskless host respectively.

[0040] As an optional implementation, in step S500, when the hardware PNP driver is installed, the operating system is notified through the hardware PNP driver that the graphics card of the diskless host is a placeholder graphics card, which is usually an NVIDIA graphics card; the hardware PNP driver installs the graphics card resources according to the configuration file of the operating system, including the registry of the placeholder graphics card.

[0041] As an optional implementation, in step S500, when installing the hardware PNP driver, the graphics driver is installed by bypassing the operating system self-check, so that the operating system mistakenly believes that the graphics driver is installed normally, thereby achieving the installation of the graphics driver. Figure 6 , Fig. 9 As shown, the following steps are specifically included: S510: modifying the hardware ID of the diskless host graphics card to the hardware ID of the placeholder graphics card; S520: notifying the operating system that the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card is specified by the PNP driver; S530: modifying the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card to the instance ID of the placeholder graphics card. Through the above process, the automatic installation of the graphics card driver through the PNP driver is realized.

[0042] As an optional implementation, each time a piece of hardware is inserted into the Windows system, the corresponding device node information will be established under the (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum) registry; after Win10, before the boot driver is started, the system creates a copy of the hardware by scanning the Enum (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum) registry. Due to the variety of hardware, this information is definitely not available in the diskless standard image. Therefore, under the conventional method, even if the hardware PNP driver (boot level) has installed the driver resources, the system will consider it not installed. The purpose of bypassing the operating system self-check can be achieved by installing the hardware PNP driver based on the hook technology. The driver can automatically install the corresponding driver according to the hardware without external intervention, so that the operating system considers that the hardware resources installed by the hardware PNP driver are valid. The specific working process of the hook technology in this embodiment is as follows. Figure 7 , Figure 8 shown.

[0043] The embodiment is only a specific example and does not represent only one implementation mode of the present invention.

[0044] Embodiment 2:

[0045] A diskless system is used to run a diskless system image and driver separation installation method of embodiment 1, including a diskless computer, a server, a server program and a cloud. There are multiple diskless computers and they are configured with different hardware. The server makes a standard diskless image and a hardware driver resource installation package through the server program, and configures a diskless image and driver separation installation system. The cloud stores a standard diskless image and a hardware driver resource installation package. The diskless computer is connected to the server in communication, and the server program is set in the server. The diskless computer and the server are both connected to the cloud in communication. In the system of the present invention, the operating system image and the hardware driver of the diskless computer are decoupled and installed separately. The hardware driver does not need to be installed when the operating system image is made, but is intelligently matched and installed by the PNP driver during the boot process. When the hardware models and versions of the client network card, graphics card, etc. are various, it is no longer necessary to keep making images for the hardware, and an image is automatically adapted to all hardware types. This better adapts to the use requirements of different hardware in the cloud game scene, facilitates promotion, upgrade and maintenance, and provides a better user experience.

[0046] The above description is only the preferred embodiment of the present invention. It is known to those skilled in the art that various changes or equivalent substitutions may be made to these features and embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. In addition, under the teachings of the present invention, these features and embodiments may be modified to adapt to specific circumstances and materials without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Therefore, the present invention is not limited to the specific embodiments disclosed herein, and all embodiments falling within the scope of the claims of this application belong to the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. A method for installing a diskless system image and a driver separately, characterized in that: Used to install the diskless image separately from the hardware driver, including the following steps: S100: Create standard diskless images and store them in the cloud; S200: creating multiple hardware driver resource installation packages based on different hardware drivers and storing them in the cloud; S300: The diskless host is connected to the cloud through a network, an operating system is installed based on the standard diskless image, and a hardware model of the diskless host is determined; S400: Matching the hardware model of the diskless host with the hardware driver resource installation package. After the matching is successful, the diskless host downloads the corresponding hardware resource installation package from the cloud. S500: The diskless host performs hardware PNP driver installation based on the downloaded hardware resource installation package, and loads the hardware driver into the memory of the diskless host to complete the hardware driver installation.

2. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The step S100 specifically includes: S110: Install Windows standard image; S120: Remove some useless components from Windows standard image and optimize image settings; S130: Import the private business into the optimized streamlined image; S140: Import the data of the image disk to obtain a standard diskless image and store it in the cloud.

3. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 2, characterized in that: In the step S130, the private service includes placeholder graphics card information of the placeholder graphics card, and the placeholder graphics card information is a piece of graphics card information that is incomplete but occupies a PCIe graphics card slot.

4. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The step S200 specifically includes: S210: downloading all driver installation packages based on multiple hardware types and multiple hardware models of all diskless computers; S220: Extracting the driver installation file and the driver registry by parsing the driver installation package; S230: Storing the driver installation file and the driver registry in the cloud based on a private format as a driver resource package.

5. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The step S300 specifically includes: S310: booting the diskless host, running the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE program in the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI stage during the booting process; S320: the network boot pre-boot execution environment iPXE program scans all the hardware of the diskless host through the interface provided by the unified extensible firmware interface UEFI; S330: Determine the network card model and graphics card model of the diskless computer.

6. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The step S400 includes: S410: The diskless host reports the host number, the corresponding network card model, and the graphics card model to the server program through TCP or HTTP; S420: The server program queries the driver resource package corresponding to the network card model and the graphics card model stored in the cloud; S430: The server program sends the driver resource packages corresponding to the network card model and the graphics card model to the corresponding diskless host.

7. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 3, characterized in that: In step S500, when the hardware PNP driver is installed, the operating system is notified through the hardware PNP driver that the graphics card of the diskless host is the placeholder graphics card; the hardware PNP driver installs the graphics card resources according to the configuration file of the operating system, including the registry of the placeholder graphics card.

8. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 7, characterized in that: In the step S500, when the hardware PNP driver is installed, the operating system self-check is bypassed to install the graphics card driver, which specifically includes the following steps: S510: modifying the hardware ID of the diskless host graphics card to the hardware ID of the placeholder graphics card; S520: Notify the operating system that the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card is specified by the PNP driver; S530: Modify the instance ID of the diskless host graphics card to the instance ID of the placeholder graphics card.

9. The method for installing the image and driver separately of a diskless system according to claim 8, characterized in that: Hardware PNP driver installation based on hook technology.

10. A diskless system, characterized in that: A method for separating the installation of images and drivers for a diskless system for running any one of claims 1 to 9, comprising a diskless computer, a server, a server program and a cloud, wherein the diskless computers are multiple and are configured with different hardware, the server uses the server program to create the standard diskless image and hardware driver resource installation package, and configures the diskless image and driver separation installation system, the cloud stores the standard diskless image and hardware driver resource installation package; the diskless computer is communicatively connected to the server, the server program is arranged in the server, and the diskless computer and the server are both communicatively connected to the cloud.