Washington DC Endpoint Management User Group

I noticed we have two SBS folders now. One at C:\SBS and the other where the application is installed on our E drive; "E:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\SBS\SBSStore\"

Are they both supposed to exist?

I am getting the following errror when trying to bring up the PXE menu but the steps in the article hasn't resolved the issue yet:

PXE-E77: Bad or missing discovery server list

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH140957

There is an initialPXEConfigPath.txt file in both folders but with different settings for the MTFTP_ROOT_FOLDER

C:\SBS\initialPXEConfigPath.txt = Mtftp_Root_Folder=\SBS\Images

E:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\SBS\SBSStore\initialPXEConfigPath.txt = Mtftp_Root_Folder=E:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\SBS\Images

I also see bootwiz.exe not getting called on the site servers after rebuilding the Automation environments.

First off, no, there should not be 2 folders.

Second, take a look at the services - if they're pointing to the folders on C:\sbs, they need to be modified to point to the other one.  NOTHING will work without all the folders in the task handler directory.

hmmm...

Something is messed up there.  I don't know how that other folder was created, but check a few things, like the services and maybe the registry and see if you can point it all back to the right location.  Check the file versions and see if they're updated in the right location or not.

Start with that, and let's see how far we can get to success.  if not, we may need to rebuild... something.

That's really weird.

On your NS do you have the agent installed to the same path as the server software?  I somehow have my agent installed on C: and my server installed on D: and I had to hack the installation batch file because it was calling %installpath%.

I haven't gotten around to testing DS functions yet.  I'll check tomorrow to see if I wound up with the same scenario.

I see this in the pxestartupinfo.log file:

5/15/2013 9:47:28 PM    Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
5/15/2013 9:47:28 PM    HasBeenRegistered Entered
5/15/2013 9:47:28 PM    Unable to read registry key

What regkey is it looking for?

All the services are pointed to the correct location on the E drive.

I was able to resolve the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling the Deployment Site Server plug-in using the built in policies. I made sure to delete the SBS folder on the C drive before re-installing the plug-in. Seems to be an odd issue with the upgrade process for V4 as all my site servers seem to have this extra folder starting yesterday.

My site servers have C:\SBS now as well.

Most of the time, when I see the agent installed on C and the server on D or something, it's because someone has removed and reinstalled the agent using the incorrect commands.  Have you had a need, at any time, to remove/reinstall the agent on the SMP?

Hightower - you also have the V4 rollup?  I'll do some research if so.

Thomas,

Let me be clear. The agent install was perfectly fine. Everything was installed as it should have been on E prior to the upgrade to V4 and Post upgrade to V4.

The extra SBS folder that showed up on C just has the config txt file in the C:\SBS\ and then all the *.SBS files in C:\SBS\SBSSTORE. No EXE's or DLLs existed in this folder path on C:

Sorry for the threadjack.  I don't know why the agent and the server are installed on different partitions.

However, yes, I do have 7.1 SP2 MP1 Rollup 4 installed.  I do not recall seeing the C:\SBS folder until NoodleNT prompted me to look.

We're pinging this around internally at this time.  I don't have an answer yet.  For anyone who has issues with SBS services because of this, or maybe I should reword that - if it's broken, please call in.  Otherwise, I'll try to find out and let everyone know.

I noticed the issue after I ran the steps to clear out the SBSStore file cache because we had a laptop that refused to boot into PXE and no longer had an automation partion because the HD was swapped out for a bigger off the shelf model.

Stop All _ Services

E:
CD "E:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\SBS\SBSStore\"

DIR *.SBS
DEL /Q *.SBS

Update Client Config

Start _ Services in correct order.

Well team, a bit more information.  It would appear that, occasionally, there are some registry keys removed / not recreated / something - during the application of the V4 roll-up.  When this occurs, the interface service can't find what it needs, and "creates" what it needs in the root of C.  So far at least, this is what appears to be happening.  We're still chasing this though, and it's not consistent.  On 13 servers, 2 exhibited the behavior, so it's not just flat out a bug, but is most likely a timing issue or something "like" that.

Thanks!

I also wanted to note that the C:\SBS folder was also created on my NS, not just my site servers.

We have had to uninstall and reinstall the deployment tools on every one of our site servers for PXE to work correctly and for bootwiz to run. After doing this and deleting that new SBS folder everything starts working again.

Real pain in the ass though.