Endpoint Management Community Blog

kbuller | 08 Apr 2008 | 1 comment

I have been tasked with locking down our Macintosh workstations. The only goal so far has been to set a screen saver idle time and to require a password to wake the computer from sleep or screen saver.

After much looking around the interwebs I found that there is not a command line utility or apple script command to change these settings. They have to be changed by modifying a preference file. The file is stored separately for each user and is stored here (the tilde is a variable that is the path to the users home folder).

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.screensaver.THE-MAC-ADDRESS-OF-YOUR-MACHINE.plist.

Argh! The file name is different on every machine. To add to the madness, that file does not exist until the user changes a setting for their screen saver. I found several solutions that...

Personalizzare il Portale Software

riva11 | 14 Apr 2008 | 0 comments

Questa settimana mi sono imbattuto in questo scenario, e ho pensato che possa essere di vostro interesse conoscere come sia possibile personalizzare in maniera semplice il portale software con il logo della vostra azienda.

Ho rinominato il file disks.gif file contenuto nella sottocartella %programfiles%\altiris\software delivery con il nome di disks.gif_bak. Poi ho modificato il logo della nostra azienda in modo da avere la stessa dimensione nell'originale file gif , assicurandomi inoltre che il background del logo fosse trasparente, infine gli ho dato nome disks.gif a questa immagine ed è stata copiata nella stessa cartella.

Il file sostituito è inizialmente fornito come logo nel CD/Disk ed era posizionato nel pannello a sinistra in del portale software. Questo è più semplice che installare Altiris SDK e diventare uno mago del codice. Anche se questa personalizzazione probabilmente adesso è supportata, ho trovato questo metodo un modo facile per personalizzare il...

Using the Printer User Interface to Script Printer Installs

nrhudson | 27 Aug 2008 | 2 comments

Our company just ran into this issue. We are undergoing a transition of employees from one section of the building to another section of the building. One of the challenges that we faced is getting the printers installed on the employees new locations. We used a combination of Altiris Software Delivery Solution and the Software Portal to publish printer install tasks to the end users to install the printers at their location.

I know some of you are probably saying, login scripts to do this, searching AD for printers, AD Group Policy, etc... Unfortunately, we did not have the time an resources from our internal staff that manages AD and login scripts to accomplish this. Plus our end users can't browse AD for printers. We decided to use an employee self help portal web page using the Altiris Software Portal and publish...

Branding the Software Portal

nrhudson | 03 Apr 2008 | 3 comments

I ran across this scenario this week and thought you might be interested in an easy way to brand the software portal with your corporate logo.

I renamed the disks.gif file in the %programfiles%\altiris\software delivery subdirectory to disks.gif_bak. I then modified our corporate logo to be the same size as the original gif file making sure the background of the logo was transparent, and named it disks.gif and copied it into the same directory.

The file I replaced provided the CD/Disk logo that was in the upper left pane of the software portal. This was easier than installing the Altiris SDK and becoming a codemaster. Although this is probably now supported, I found it an easy way to brand the software portal that we are about to use for departmental moves and software requests. The end result will look...

Generic Script for Installing and Loading Excel Addins with WiseScript

WiseUser | 11 Mar 2008 | 0 comments

Here's an extension to the topic "Installing and Loading Excel Addins with WiseScript" that makes this script even more useful.

We can make the script from that tip more generic so it'll work in any version of Office.

A Small change has to be made to the WiseScript.
Office Version can be found in an HKLM entry under
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\windows\currentversion\app paths\excel.exe
Value Name : Path

Please see the attachment for the script change.

Vista SP1 Cleanup

CondorMan | 29 Feb 2008 | 5 comments

If you plan on installing Vista Service Pack 1 when it is released (highly recommended), you might want to run the cleanup command afterward.

To do this, open the run dialog (Win-R) and type "vsp1cln.exe" (without quotes) and press enter.

This will remove the ability to uninstall the service pack (so make sure to test everything before running the cleanup), and it will cleanup 1GB worth of data off of your hard drive.

Stopping Task Server Tasks -- Why did I Send that Task to "All Computers"?

BRING | 21 Feb 2008 | 0 comments

Measure twice and cut once. Sometimes not remembering to do that causes trouble, and has sometimes ruined some beautiful wood stock.

Frequently we do something similar in the Task Server environment when we forget to check the collection references that our tasks are assigned to. Like sending a Shutdown, or Restart task to "All Computers".

While this won't be painless to all end users, we can mitigate it and stop it from hitting everyone, using the following procedure:

1. Delete the Task from the Console. This may also involve deleting any referenced items as well.
2. Restarting the Altiris Object Host Service. This will clear the Task Server cache, and allow any deleted jobs to be cleaned and not promulgated to other machines.

It's just that simple. And while...

Task Server Client Jobs are Not Running on My Client Machine - Why?

BRING | 21 Feb 2008 | 0 comments

Task Server has added some great new capabilities to the Altiris environment. And some solutions are taking advantage of those capabilities. Software Delivery is one of them.

However, it is important to make sure that you have rolled out the Software delivery Agent for Task Server to all of the machines necessary. Otherwise you might just encounter an error like the one below:

Process: w3wp.exe (5152) 
Thread ID: 2376
Module: AltirisNativeHelper.dll
Source: Altiris.ClientTask.Web.RequestSubAgent.Page_Load
Description: Error getting subagent file ( Unhandled exception. Type=System.Exception Msg=Matching agent not found in the database:
AgentName='SWDAGENTFORTS.DELIVERSOFTWARETASKHANDLE', PlatformName='WINDOWS%20SERVER%202003', PlatformType=Production, OSType='WIN32' Src=Altiris.ClientTask
StackTrace=
at Altiris.ClientTask.ClientTaskSubAgent.Load()
at Altiris.ClientTask.Web.RequestSubAgent.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) )

This occurs when a client...

Using Reserved Characters in Custom Inventories - Good or Bad?

BRING | 13 Feb 2008 | 0 comments

Naming objects in our Notification Server environment. Seems fairly simple, but the process can be a bit troublesome. Or naming applications, or custom dataclasses. Some times we like to use reserved characters in those names to be descriptive. Characters like($ ; & + , / : = ? @) are reserved characters, specifically to IIS.

These things can cause problems for custom inventories especially. You could see errors like:

Unable to process the file "...\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\EvtQFast\Process\INVblah.nse" Moving to "...\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\EvtQFast\Bad\AeXException\nseXXX.tmp". Reason: Failed to process NSE System.Xml.XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName.

Certainly, if you can avoid the use of these characters in your naming conventions, that helps.

...

Altiris Client for Mac and Apple Remote Desktop

kbuller | 07 May 2008 | 4 comments

I did a search for "Macintosh" on the Juice site the other day and came up with 4 results... Hopefully this article will be of interest to at least a few people.

The latest release of the Deployment Console supports Macintosh clients but in its current state it is no match for Apple Remote Desktop. I just wanted to share a couple scripts that I use from ARD to make the most out of the Altiris Client for Mac.

Click the "Unix" button on the toolbar of ARD and place these scripts in it.

Refresh Altiris Client Policies

/Applications/Utilities/Altiris/NSAgent/.bin/aex-refreshpolicies

Send Basic Inventory

/Applications/Utilities/Altiris/NSAgent/.bin/aex-sendbasicinv

Run Inventory

Replace -x on the last line with -r for Full, -h for Hardware, and -s for...

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