Ghost Solution Suite

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  • 1.  Ghost server name

    Posted Oct 02, 2007 09:41 PM
    As recently reported elsewhere, I have moved our Ghost Console and configuration server to a new machine, running Windows 2003. I've successfully moved the database using Nigel's scripts and a few workarounds. One thing I have noticed though is that the clients all report the old server name as their manager, even though they're correctly connecting to the new one. I realise that importing the database means I'm using the old server's certificates etc., but is there somewhere I can change the server name so that it's reported correctly at the client end? Not of high importance, just a bit of house keeping.


  • 2.  RE: Ghost server name

    Posted Oct 03, 2007 10:24 PM
    The server name that the clients report is embedded in the PUBKEY.CRT file when the server is first installed, and although that file format is extensible I haven't yet been able to find the time to fully separate the displayed name (which we want to be the current one) from the design reason I actually embedded the name in there (which was for the benefit of having a stable identifier that the clients could look up and the server could register in WINS, for customers with networks that don't support multicast).

    There is a process by which I think you could edit this if you really, really wanted to. In 1533 and later, there are a couple new switches in the server executable:
    c:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost> ngserver -ioprint pubkey.crt

    This should read in the binary format of the pubkey.crt file, and produce pubkey.crt.txt which is the same data in printable form. The original machine name for the server install is embedded there.
    c:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost> ngserver -ioread pubkey.crt

    This should do the converse operation, reading the pubkey.crt.txt file and writing out a new pubkey.crt file. Of course, it's a good idea to save the original file if you do this

    Now, most of the content of the certificate file is binary cryptographic goop, but you should be able to edit the name as a quoted string in the "Host" field:
    #\Certificate{
    Modulus = #[0x1B 0xBB ...goop... 0x63 0x9B],
    Generator = #[0x14 0xEA ...goop... 0xD7 0xA2],
    Public = #[0x0E 0xC7 ...goop... 0xAD 0xB0],
    Host = "dev-nbree5",
    Certificate = (#[0x18 0x48 ...goop... 0x40 0x58] . #[0x09 0xA7 ...more goop... 0xBD 0x8B])
    }

    Doing this and dropping the resulting .CRT file into your images using Explorer and/or copying the new certificate file out through tasks should change this.

    Now, what I want to do is add lots more fields to this data structure in future (although whether I actually do get to do that depends on my workload, since my dance card is pretty full) so that the clients can find the server more ways and so that there's an extended description field that gets displayed instead of that internal NetBIOS name field.


  • 3.  RE: Ghost server name

    Posted Apr 23, 2009 01:29 PM
    I noticed there is also a privkey.crt file that might contain the old server name if you have moved your database to another server. I don't know if this is necessary to change as well but wanted to point out that the same coommands for printing and reading the crt text file to update the certificate file work on this as well. This may ormay not be neccessary for this fix but I imagine it would be good to update this file with the new server name as well.