Ghost Solution Suite

Hello, I'm hoping someone can answer this question for me. We are currently using GSS 1.1 with the Enterprise Console to provision machines. Our new infrastructure requires us to use the second nic in the servers (both are broadcom netXtremes) which is currently unsupported in this version of Ghost. I was wondering if this setup will work in GSS 2.0? Or is there tweak that will work with GSS 1.1?

Thanks for any help anybody can give!

Steven

Actually, I'm surprised that it wouldn't work in GSS1.1 - the work to add support for multiple network adapters in GSS2 was really all about the clients, not the server, and several customers in the forums have reported that they do have multiple server NICs.

What problems are you having with GSS1.1? We need to figure out what underpins any problem you are having now before giving you a blanket assurance that an upgrade would fix it.

Maybe we aren't using GSS 1.1, I'm not sure at the moment but I will check the version from the person who purchased it tomorrow at work. I believe we are using Ghost enterprise console 8.5. As to the problem, we are using the virtual partition to try to partition the machines, the partition and software installs fine in the OS (windows 2003 server) using the second nic, but as soon as the computer reboots itself to be provisioned it defaults back to the first nic. I have been trying to work on the drivers in the ghost console to change the computer to the second nic at 1Gigabit, full duplex speeds but so far it only reads the default settings.

Also sorry for the confusion, I realize I referred to the clients as servers (which is what we call them)

Thanks for any help you can give.

StevenMessage was edited by:
Steven Schiffer

> I believe we are using Ghost enterprise console 8.5

It'll be either 8.2 - which is what went into GSS1.0 - or 8.3, which is what's in GSS1.1, and it's probably GSS1.1

> Also sorry for the confusion, I realize I referred to the clients as servers (which is what we call them)

Ah, righto :-)

> have been trying to work on the drivers in the ghost console to change the computer to the second nic at 1Gigabit, full duplex speeds but so far it only reads the default settings

The trick with supporting multiple NICs - what GSS2 has to do differently - is that server-class machines in particular often tend to have two NICs that are completely identical, except for the slot number they claim to have on one of the PCI buses. Most DOS-level drivers will bind to whichever one has the lowest PCI slot number, unless told otherwise - that means that when building the DOS virtual partition, the Ghost console's client will try to find the PCI bus number and slot number for the specific NIC that is being used to talk to the console, and write those into the driver configuration.

Of course, for that to work the DOS drivers for the NICs need to understand the conventions for specifying the bus and slot numbers - unfortunately not all manufacturers have the same idea about this. For instance, Intel adapters document that the SLOT parameter in the PROTOCOL.INI combines both the PCI bus bus number and slot number, e.g. http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/sb/cs-008480.htm

Basically, if you want to do this by hand in GSS1.1 I'd go looking for the equivalent kind of documentation to see how to format the PCI bus slot identifier for your system.

The other aspect of multiple NIC support in GSS2 is that the console still only has one set of network configuration properties that you can set in "Configuration"-type console tasks - similar to the above, the adapter that the configuration is applied to is the one that is being used by the console client to communicate to the console server. There's no real way to work around this in GSS1.1, unfortunately - the configuration system just won't touch a system with two installed network adapters.

"There's no real way to work around this in GSS1.1, unfortunately - the configuration system just won't touch a system with two installed network adapters."

Most all of my workstations and servers have 2 NICS and when I upgraded to GSS 1.1 I started having massive issues with this. What I don't understand is I NEVER had issues in GSS 1.0 with this. My problem now is I am on GSS 2.0 and all of my machines with 2 NICS do not show up in the console. I can push the client and it shows up on the client end but there is no communication back to the server from there. I would assume it does not know which NIC to go out when talking back with the server. In windows on these clients I disabled the 2nd NIC but that did nothing.

Now tomorrow I will call support and they will tell me I have a network issue which is not the case considering I have 23 machines connecting and working fine. So what do I go back to 1.0? Can 2.0 handle two NICS?

Todd

I can't speak to the difference between 1.0 and 1.1 because I didn't write the code in question, but it definitely should be working in GSS2. If you have clients than don't seem to be working right, what I'd like to see is if you can collect the ngctw32.log files from one or two of the affected clients, and the matching ngserver.log so I can inspect what the clients and server think is going on (it'd be good if you can also supply a MAC address from the affected clients, so I can find the entries for them in the server-side logs).

Drop me a line at nigel dot bree at gmail dot com and we can arrange how to get them to me to look at (although since I'm travelling at the moment, my connectivity will be a little spotty for the next couple of days).