Ghost Solution Suite

I have two issues, one has stumpted me for quite some time.  And now...the workaround is giving me problems.

I'm not an expert at GSS by any means, but I can somewhat hold my own. Please ask any questions you may have.

First issue, we have one model system that refuses to network boot to the Ghost Server WinPE console.  I've loaded driver after driver in to the WinPE image and nothing helps.  Every other system works just fine, although I believe this is the only one with an Intel NIC all the rest are Broadcom.  The model is a Dell Latitude E4310.  It is able to network boot as it should to the server, select the appropriate boot image, it copies and begins to boot.  Makes it all the way through, but once the console shows it has a 127.0.0.1 IP, and obviously cannot connect.

The catch...(this is the work around, some years back) taking the same drivers and image, made a boot CD and boot the exact same model laptop(s) with it and everything works perfectly.  Boots as expected from the CD and the ngctw32 console connects and shows.  No big deal that was fine.

Which leads to the 2nd issue.  Recently our original Ghost server died and I had to rebuild a new box from backups.  Did a clean install and basically just recreated (not copied) everything from our existing configuration(s).  First issue is still an issue, but now when we boot from CD it is looking for the old server and it cannot find it.  We get the "polling for bound ghost server" or something to that effect and it eventually times out.  From research its because the certificate is specifying the old server and it should go out looking for a new server if that one cannot be found.  Well...it doesn't.

So I now the workaround, to the already in place workaround, is to back out the console to the original command prompt, browse to Ghost directory manually delete the pubkey.crt.  And relaunch the console, or in our case, I'm just relaunching the startnet.cmd.  It immediatly finds the new Ghost server and everyone is happy.

Does anyone have any help to get me in the right direction?  Fixing the first problem will make the 2nd (new) problem a moot point.

out of curiousity, what is the Intel network card?  is it the 82579LM?  if it is, its a PAIN.  search it in these forums

for the cert, if you changed the name of the server, and you did NOT use the FQDN, it wont find it since the PE does not set the name server to ask for info  (server_name vs server_name.mycompany.com)

Its pretty close, my guess would be its the revision before it.  Its an Intel 82577LM.

The 2nd part somewhat makes sense.  Are you saying I should have used FQDN or not?  It is searching for only the host name right now, not FQDN.  But isn't Ghost supposed to poll and discover any responding server if the one specified in the cert does not respond?

Thanks for the help so far.

i WOULD use the FQDN.

as for polling, im not sure if it "should", all i know is when we reinstalled ours, we changed the cert to use FQDN since the PE was having trouble sometimes (but not all the time) resolving just the name.  maybe subnet related?

Trying the driver install today you recommended.

I'll tackle the cert rename after that.  Is there an easy way to change that? Or would it be easier to rename the new server to the old server's name?

find the "pubkey.crt" file on the server, and rename it to "pubkey.crt.old".  restart the Server (you may have to restart the service), and it should recreate the certificate

well, here is a Symantec doc on how to do it.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH110306&profileURL=https%3A%2F%2Fsymaccount-profile.symantec.com%2FSSO%2Findex.jsp%3FssoID%3D1382964682837aZf3Pusbu32WsieK115okhCKDZds2JhPI4XDF

For the second issue,if you wish to use the same boot CD from the old install,boot the client using the the CD.When you see the ngctw32 command window ,close the same and enter the main command prompt .Runn the below commands,

cd\ghost

del pubkey.crt

ngctw32 -console

The above will delete the pubkey.crt from the RAM Disk(As you cannot delete the same from the CD) and will re-launch the client,but this time the client will look for the available server and will identify the new server automatically.

If you do not wish to do this everytime ,add the below drivers(Vista -x86) to WINPE under the curent installation and create a PXE boot package or boot CD(Change the the "Start ghost32.exe" line to "Start ngctw32 -console" in the Start.bat for CD).

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/latitude-e4310?driverId=R290983&osCode=WLH&fileId=2731115712&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI

Reference,

http://www.Symantec.com/docs/TECH110136