Lazy Employee

You could possabily make a boot option for each image that you have and when they PXE boot to it select it from there.

Other than that tell him/her to stop whining and get back to work.

In my humble opinion?

Let him moan and groan, and kick his ass to get to his job and do what he is paid for.

Regards
Erik
www.DinamiQs.com

Check out Boot Console from Altrinsic Solutions
http://altrinsicsolutions.com/products/BC/index.html

It might be able to help you do what your tech is hoping for. Of course my guess is that once the boss sees they're going to have to pay for this guy's whining then he'll just have to get over it.

with demand of "single button console" to shutdown and start computers by collection.
the helpdesk don't want to mess with the altiris console.
i found my solution in the ASDK...
if every thing will go well, i will publish it. :)

If you don't mind scripting stuff, look at a dos utility called axsched.exe in the eXpress share. I've used this little guy to launch DS jobs from a login script or from a NS task.

Good Luck

I have a sneaking feeling that the lazy employee ... is YOU! Ahahahaha! I found your secret!

Just kidding - I know what you mean. The way you can do it with AXSCHED is:

axsched <computername> "<Job Name>"

If you want to specify a scheduled time for it to start, add /t at the end.

For example, let's say the name of your DS job is "Deploy Computer Image", and the computername is "PikoshiLaptop". You want to run the image job at 1:00pm. You'd run:

axsched PikoshiLaptop "Deploy Computer Image" /t 13:00

Some caveats:
- make sure that if security is enabled in the console, the user that runs the axsched job has logged into the DS at least once with those credentials. This works for 6.8, but DOES NOT work with 6.5. With 6.5, you may need to use the /lu and /lp switches in order to make the axsched work. Type axsched /? for more help.
- Make sure you don't have multiple jobs with the same name in your DS. I don't know what would happen in this case, whether it would only schedule the first job, or whether it would schedule all the jobs with the same name (imagine imaging your laptop twice!). Seems like it would be something Altiris should work on in the next edition of AXSCHED.

Also, if you - I mean, your employee - is groaning about finding the computer amidst a slew of folders, I'd suggest this little trick: just click on All Computers, then select the computer from the RIGHT pane and schedule the job that way. It's very easy to find the computer in the alphabetized list in the right pane rather than in the folder maze on the left.

Hope that helps!
-Shawn "Blacktop" Lewis

p.s. I chose "Blacktop" because it is kind of like Blackbeard, and I have thick dark hair. Besides, "Blackhead" didn't sound right.

p.p.s. whoever is controlling the pirate translation algorithm, might I suggest that you substitute "be" for "am"?

Thank you very much for the info. This should be a fairly easy and inexpensive way to get him to quit his whining. I do have one more question though. Will this work if I pass a variable like %COMPUTERNAME%?

It sure does! Now you're thinking like a pirate! (err, wait, that was last week.)

If you are ever curious, just run a test yourself (although I recommend using a test job such as "run cmd.exe" instead of "deploy computer image" ... hehehe)

Hire someone else who wants to work and learn new stuff. Even if you make this easy for the lazy ass, he will find something else to moan about..
There are so many out there who would be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Hmm...looks as though I am still screwed...axSched cannot be run in DOS mode. Any ideas?

axsched cannot be run in dos mode? It only runs in dos mode. What do you mean? How are you trying to run it?

I have axsched called in a batch file using the arguments I specified, and it's working in all our sites except those that use DS 6.5 (as I explained). It is a dos command line program, so it should work. Maybe you're using a different program?

What I tried was running one of my PXE Network boot options which is a MS-DOS boot that just brings up a DOS prompt. I type in axsched and it tells me the program cannot be run in dos mode. I'm running DS 6.9.