Hallo Weedee

This surely is possible, and there are a number of ways og doing this... - mine isn't necessarily the right way.. ;)

1) You can change your drive mapping in your PXE boot image to point to F: - \\%ALTIRIS_PXE_SERVER%\eXpress

And then on all of your PXE servers you make sure you have a share called eXpress. Then i normally create a "robocopy" job which i run as a schedulet task i do it as a /MIR which mirrors the catalog and deleting files if they exist in the destination but not in the source.
I typically have 3 folders or so where i store all of the files i need in my deployment, hence making it easier to decide which folders to copy and which not to copy.. ;)

2) you could use a script to do this, and make your driver DB to take advantage of your tokens in Altiris.
You can fx. use "%#!computer@model_num%" which gives you the model number information of your client giving you the oppertunity to copy just that library down to your client (or if you use windows 7 giving you the oppertunity to only look into that library and all sub library's).

Hope it clerify's some for you. ;)

Kind Regards
Morten Leth

Hi,

My approach similar to Morten's. I normally (for WinPE) map a M:\ Drive to the express share, and an N:\ Drive to \\%ALTIRIS_PXE_SERVER%\Altiris.

Moving the drive letters up a few notches is great for avoiding issues with machines bearing card reader slots.

The advantage of this having two automation drive mappings, is that it maintains a central point for logs (the temp folder under the express share). The disadvantage is that your rdeployt.exe is being dragged across your WAN link (which may or may not be a problem for you).

The driver folders can be replicated using your replication method of choice. Among the options are Notification Server (if you have NS) can be used, or using robobopy scripts as Morten suggests!

You can also refine the above approach for doing DS on-demand post-image software deployments.  By dumping the Package Server's IP address into a a add/removve programs reg script in cmdlines.txt in automation, when you machine boots into production a DS inventory can retrieve it.  You can then have site-based post-image software deployment with DS by referencing this data in the file source patch.

Kind Regards,
Ian./

Hallo Weedee

Why use that token in your copy file to when you have a drive mapped to that location?

I must admit i am not sure if you could use that token in your copy file to method (the reason i say this is because i haven't tried it).

But since you hae your drive letter mapped to N: (referring to ian's post) then you could simply use N:\Images\Drivers

Another reason why your drive thingy won't work could be you don't have eXpress in your path, i don't know whether you in fact do have a library shared as Images, but i'm betting you don't :)

Kind Regards
Morten Leth

Hi Morten,

When I attempted to put N:\Images\Drivers as a source path and choose 'Copy files directly from file source' I got error:

"When using the option to have the agent download files directly from the source, the source filename must be a UNC path"

If I choose to use option "Copy file using Deployment Server" instead, I get error

"Specified source was not found. Please browse to the desired file or directory"

But...

I think I have found workaround. I read about FIRM.EXE tool. I made up this script (not tested it yet). Thanks to dfranfis. I modified one script he posted here earlier.

T: drive is mapped to \\PXEServer\Images share and containing windrivers folder, which have subfolders and drivers for specific model.

This should copy that folder to c:\temp. I'll use Run Script tasks later in deployment process to install these drivers from c:\temp.

echo Hardware model is %#!computer@prod_name%

rem hardware models

if "%#!computer@prod_name%" =="HP EliteBook 8440p" goto 8440p

REM If we didn't find a match, just exit

goto exit

rem desktops

:8440p

S:\RDeploy\Windows\firm -recurse copy "T:\windrivers\%#computer@prod_name%\*" "prod:\testcopy"

goto exit

Hi Morten,

My Images folder absolute file path is E:\Images. I created this folder by hand and I have shared it with name Images.

My eXpress folder absolute file path is E:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Solution

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but my FIRM script copies all folders from under \windrivers directory to c:\testcopy, not only \windrivers\HP EliteBook 8440p.

You can also use PXE Redirection or GetSrv.

SK.

Hi  Weedee,

I think Mortenleth gave you a good answer. Do you have anything outstanding on this post?

Kind Regards,
Ian./

Hey weedee

Glad you got everything sorted and things are now working as they should, if you would be so kind to mark the answer you find best as the solution this thread will then be closed.

Have a great day.

Kind Regards
Morten Leth

Hi Weedee,

I want to say that in order to use xcopy, you might have to reboot before WinPE would see the file structure after imaging.  Firm would allow the files to be injected into the partition without the reboot.  I could be wrong as I'm not planning on changing my process to verify this right now.