Deployment Solution

Hi everyone

I have setup a test server 2012 and installed DS6.9 Sp6.

I copied over my FIRM commands from the current live server which do the Replace Tokens naming on unattend.xml so the PC is named properly.

The FIRM commands seem to have changed. I did a search for firm and found it is named firm.exe and located in several directories on server 2012. I have tried a bunch of the various firm executables but all of them fail to copy the unattend file over to the PC.

The error on the splash screen on the PC reads "The system cannot execute the specified program".

Can someone send me a copy of the FIRM command when using it with replace tokens on Server 2012?

Thank You,

Sean

PS: Below is my current FIRM/Replace tokens commands on the live server which works great! And I have already tried changing firm-win.exe to just firm.exe

.\firm-win.exe copy .\Images\sysprep\imaged\%ID%.txt PROD:\windows\system32\sysprep\unattend.xml

.\firm-win.exe copy .\Images\sysprep\imaged\%ID%.txt PROD:\windows\panther\unattend.xml

Well, it'd help if you told us what DOES happen.  You can run those commands in a command prompt in WinPE and see what they fail on.  Maybe it's just not finding the files?  Why are you using a variable for the name of the unattend file?  You have many of them?

If you are doing this from WinPe, why use firm at all? WinPe already has access to the C:-partition so a simple copy will do just fine.

firm was used in the old DosPE times; in dos there was no other way to access a NTFS partition.

Hi Thomas

I did post what it does and the error I see in my message above:

"The system cannot execute the specified program".

I actually got around the whole thing by simply grabbing the copy of FIRM from the current live server. Copied that onto the new test server and executed the same FIRM commands with no issues.

-Sean

Hi Ixbe

I was taught to use the FIRM commands for the Token Replacement. Basically I use one unattend file but replace the PC name inside the unattend file on the fly just after the image is finished being put down. Using the firm command allows me to grab the machine name from the Altiris server and replace it inside the unattend file.

Can WinPE do this also? If so can you post an example of the command which I would run from the DS server?

Thanks in advance!

-Sean

REM Replace tokens command is actually executed in:

REM Replacetokens .\temp\SYSPREP.TXT .\temp\%ID%.INF

The first line is just a comment.

The second line, although it looks like a comment, it is de Deployment server magic pre-prosessing that does it. System tokens like %ID% are case-sensative (uppercase) 

My mistake.  Glad you got around it.  I wonder what was wrong with the copy of firm you had?  Huh...

FIRM is still OK to use.  In fact, the application still uses it (which you can see in the DSTasks logs).  The advantage of FIRM is that it will FIND the production drive for you, where if you use Copy, you have to figure that out yourself.  The disadvantage is that if it doesn't work, it's a pain to get around.  I use copy when doing custom work and a quick script in VBS to find the production drive, but I use FIRM for any default imaging using the engine.

So feel free to keep using it.

HOWEVER

It is important to note that Replace Tokens and FIRM are 100% disconnected.

Example:  FIRM is used in DS 7.1/7.5 but Replace Tokens is NOT.  Well, sort of not.

Replace Tokens is executed by the engine on the server prior to sending any data to the client.  FIRM is executed on the client using files given to it by the server, OR files you give it yourself.  Replace Tokens modifies files anywhere using the engine to simply look through a file for known wild-cards, and doesn't have a clue if FIRM even exists.  After using Replace Tokens, you can EITHER use FIRM, or Copy, or Robocopy, or VBS - whatever suits you.

And we all really miss Replace Tokens in DS 7.x.  :(

Have fun!!