Ghost Solution Suite

With my clinet machine all have ghost client installed.  I am thinking if it is possible to reboot client machine into Ghost or Ghost32 with network capability enabled using batch or script file??

Message Edited by Comet on 01-03-2008 10:53 AM

Since you have the ghost client installed on your client machines, you can execute any task on the Console machine from the client. The task has to have 'Allow Client Initiation' checked.

If you want to create a task to only load Ghost (without it automatically starting a clone or restore), then check the 'Execute Command' task step. Set the command to run 'ghost.exe' in the 'Ghost Partition.'

That should reboot the computer to the Ghost partition and load Ghost.exe, which should have network capabilites eg to connect to a GhostCast Server session.

Then initiate the task from the client machine by clicking on the client tray icon, and selecting the task.

You can also create a batch file to initiate the task from the client machine using:

ngctw32.exe -initiate taskname password

Thanks for the tips Bruce, this is really helpful on simplifying my automation design! 

I noticed there's a box for 'arguments' when I set command to run ghost.exe,  is that the box where I can add commandline switches (for ghost.exe)??


Message Edited by Comet on 01-08-2008 12:18 PM

Just an update, I tried your method and it worked great as far as rebooting clients into ghost with network enabled.  However, on the client side, ghost will give me a message whenever joining a multicast session, it was something about relocating Virtual Partition .  Regardless of clicking yes or no clients will ultimately boot back into Windows.....Have you tried this and succeed??  I wouldn't have this problem if everything is handled by GhostConsole,  what is missing here?

Basically what I've been trying to do is to run a multicast session on my server.  Then using ghost console + tasks to tell clients (the ones I pick from a large group) to reboot into ghost and the multicast session on my server automatically.  It's a pain in the rear end to multicast in GhostConsole, because I can either pick one computer or all computers in a group......the best I could do with my automation script is to deploy to one client at a time, which is very inefficient...and so not multicasting.....


Message Edited by Comet on 01-08-2008 05:27 PM

The only times I've done this was creating images which worked fine.  Just tried restoring an image and had the same thing happens to me.  I guess since this is a 'execute command' task rather than 'clone' task the virtual partition is more temporary than usual.

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Basically what I've been trying to do is to run a multicast session on my server.  Then using ghost console + tasks to tell clients (the ones I pick from a large group) to reboot into ghost and the multicast session on my server automatically.

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If you run a restore task with Console, it'd start a GhostCast session for the clients to connect to.  The session name is automatically generated as CONSOLENAMEPush## where ## is a sequential session number.

So what you can do here is on your server, create a multicast session with the same session name as the one console will create next.

You'd need to know what the next session number console will use though.  Just run a restore task to find the session number and cancel the task.  To get it to automatically kick off if you click on 'More Options>>' you can specify how many clients connects before starting and/or after a certain amount of time has passed.

Then run the restore task on your console machine.  When the GhostCast session is created, Alt-4 to close it.  The clients should connect to the session on your server.  
 

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It's a pain in the rear end to multicast in GhostConsole, because I can either pick one computer or all computers in a group......the best I could do with my automation script is to deploy to one client at a time, which is very inefficient...and so not multicasting.....

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You can create another folder and set up the task to run on this group.  And when you want to ran the task, copy the machines from the Default folder to this folder.

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You can create another folder and set up the task to run on this group.  And when you want to ran the task, copy the machines from the Default folder to this folder.

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  That's one of the solutions I have thought of too, but would it be possible to automate the "copy client" process using some scripts/command line switch or via the API of Ghostconsle (does it even have one? Lolz) ...I have thought of automating this "copy Client" process by simulating keystrokes using WSH, but considering all the many possible key stroke sequences that's just not viable... ugh!


Message Edited by Comet on 01-09-2008 10:18 AM