Ghost Solution Suite

I sent a job to 72 computers (the job was to unfreeze from DeepFreeze).  Only 49 clients remained after that command was sent.  The rest of the clients show up as disconnected.  Upcon closer observation, I looked at the affected client's log file:  C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\ngctw32.log

 

The log file shows the client happily connected to my management server until something happens, and then after some stuff that I dont quite understand, I see it connected to someone elses Console!  It sends the packet and gets the response from another IP! 

How can I make sure that my ghost clients do not jump to someone elses console server? And what causes such a jump in the first place?

This is a really bog problem for me, because I send tasks to hundreds of computers, and it's very very bad to have such a high failure rate, which at the moment is unfixable, because I can't reissue a command to a client that has disconnected from my Console.

Thanks,
Alex

RMSe17,

What you are seeing here is a common issue with having mutliple Ghost Cosnoles on the same network. Sometimes a client will poll for a server, and when that occurs, it will align itself to the first console to respond. If multicast traffic was block between the two consoles, this would likely resolve the matter. This might help if the consoles are on different subnets and each responsible for a single subnet. Also, newer version of the Ghost Console tend to suffer less from this. Are you using Ghost SOlution SUite 2.5? If not, try that.

I am using GSS2.5, with the latest updates.  Our organization has several thousand computers, and the network is set up with vlans and subnets.  I have no ability to modify switch or vlan infrastructure..  Is it possible to tell a ghost client to only connect to a sertain IP for the console, instead of it polling for a server?  My server IP never changes, so I never need the client to scan for server.. I just need it to connect to one IP.

Thanks!

In that case, I recommend redistributing the pubkey to affected computers. In the document linked below, there is a batch file that you can populate with your clients. You can run this whenever this happens. You will need to populate the file with all your clients, but thereafter, the same file will work. Here is the link to that:

How to distribute the "pubkey.crt" file to multiple client computers

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/on-technology.nsf/docid/2008070209594960

That sounds like a good solution.  I don't have any shares on the computers, so I will just insert the pubkey.crt into my ghost image, along with a script that will copy that file over into the ghost directory at every bootup.  Does the server ever change it's own certificate?
If it does, I will have to update the pubkey.crt that the clients have..  but if the server does not change it's sertificate, then this solution would work indefinitely.

The Ghost Console never changes its certificate, so tat sounds like a great idea.