Deployment Solution

How can I change the 3 sec timeout  for the "Press [F8] to Select....." prompt?  Also, anyone know how I can specify the order that the Preboot Configurations appear in the PXE Boot Menu?

....<insert cricket sounds here>.....

hello, did you find this?

There isn't an option to change the timeout. Once a client receives a job/task you will not see the PXE menu anymore, unless the SBS(PXE) services are restarted.

But as yet, the option once available for this is gone.

By design, the product will give you a 3 second timeout until you actually assign a job to it.  Consider it this way.  There are essentially 3 states for the PXE selection menu:

A = 3 second delay to press F8
B = no delay - boot to prod
C = no delay - boot to automation.

When the PXE services are started, all computers are set to A.  This is the default.

When you assign any job with a "reboot to" task, the computer is set to either B or C.

The computers are only changed from their current setting when another task is sent to it.  Thus, once on B or C, they never return to A until the services are reset.

AND, as mentioned, there is no setting currently in the console to control if this is ever reset, or to increase/decrease that F8-timeout.

This has become a very serious issue for us.  Most of our server deployments are remote.  We access the target server's console via DRAC/ILO/IP-KVM. There is often a substantial video lag, so 3 seconds is not enough of a window.....If you were lucky enough to time the "F12" correctly (on server rebuilds where the HD is not empty & there's no boot device menu), by the time the video updates it's already too late to hit "F8".

I don't know where to add my vote for feature requests, so I'm posting here....PLEASE hook us up with control over this parameter.

why don't you use a job to tell the server to boot to automation?  And, if it's initial deployment, why not configure PXE to automatically tell the server to boot to automation?

Can you please explain why you "need" to press F8 to boot?  I understand habits, and procedures, and such, but it really helps if we can explain why F8 is a need, rather than a habit/process that is "familiar".  Does that make sense?

Thanks!

In part, we need this in order to avoid completely re-engineering the server deployment processes that we've been using for several years with Altiris 6.x.  The migration to 7.x would have been challenging enough without the loss of features provided by DS6.9 (Note: if it ain't broke, don't break it).  With our current process, the person building a server doesn't directly interact with Altiris at all.  A DHCP reservation is made via an HTA tool & the target server is booted to PXE.  An HTA is automatically launched in WinPE, the build variables are selected/entered (OS, customer, hostname, disk config, utilities.....), & imaging is initiated via Rdeploy or Imagex, dependent on OS.  On reboot, customer-specific & build-specific info is pulled from text files on the DS & a scripted install/config is performed.  Registry entries are created early in this process that are used for custom inventory, script control, & NS collection/filter assignment.

I realize that for a fresh build we can set a default PXE option but occasionally a network hiccup hoses the process, a customer changes his mind, or a data-entry error is made necessitating a re-do.  Since the target is no longer "unknown" to DS7.1, it doesn't know to use that PXE option.  In some of these instances, NS connectivity isn't there, so reboot-to-automation is not possible. I'm sure there are work-arounds, but I was really hoping we'd get back at least some of the lost DS functionality....the ability to re-start or skip a failed task & resume a sequential job is also sorely missed.

They designed it to work this way? I've just raised a support case as I assumed it was a bug

Selecting unknown devices to automatically boot to PXE would prbably be fine for a one off image deployment but what if one needs to reimage a device more than once, in a dev environment for example, or in my case testing image deployment and a somewhat flaky DA - but that's for another thread. It's at real PITA having to restart those netboot services.

So, in my opinion the F8 feature should be there as should some means of resetting a device's state.

Mark