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  • 1.  Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 27, 2007 04:50 PM
    Is this even possible?  Since many of our lab computers are constantly having their OS's changed and messed with and was wondering if there is a way to just push out images knowing only the MAC address of the destination client?


  • 2.  RE: Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 28, 2007 05:15 AM
    Hi,

    Though console display the machine name, it does not use it to identify the machine. We use MAC address (or UUID in recent versions) to identify the machine.

    Changing the machine name and OS will not be a problem for Ghost Console to identify the machine.

    Hope this answers your question, let us know if you want more information.

    Krish


  • 3.  RE: Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 28, 2007 05:47 AM
    The way I read the question is a little different; basically, there isn't a search facility in the console that lets you find a client based on the MAC address. Because of that, what "bnixon" is asking for is unreasonably difficult to do.

    However, it's a reasonable thing to want to do. Since I posted a script that reads from the console database in answer to a forum post just yesterday, I thought I could adapt that script to create a printable version of the MAC addresses each machine has (the raw data in the database being a binary encoding that's hard to search directly).

    So, I did that and then added a simple string search on top of that, and having found a match it then prints the names of the matching machines so you can find them in the console. The script only looks inside the "Default" folder, but hopefully it might be useful for this; it's available here. Double-click on the WSF file in the archive and you should be prompted to enter a search pattern, which can be any fragment of a MAC address with the elements separated by hyphens, e.g. 00-15-C5

    Let me know if the script doesn't work for you, it's just something I whipped up at home so I haven't tested on anything other than a Windows XP machine. The script just lets you find the machine you want, but from that it's easy to assign it as the target of a task.

    By the way, a useful resource for working with MAC addresses is the IEEE's OUI Registry which lets you find the manufacturer to which a MAC address is assigned (the first 3 bytes of every MAC address being the OUI part which identifies the manufacturer). For instance, my example 00-15-C5 is assigned to Dell.


  • 4.  RE: Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 28, 2007 09:00 AM
    If you want to find a machine via mac address you can make a dynamic group and set its filter to the mac address or addresses you are looking for.  So, the answer is yes, you can select machines via mac address. However, as the Symantec folks have told you, unless you do a config refresh the name in the console will not change and when you choose to re-image the machines and you use a template they will get named to whatever name is in the template or the default one the console has if that is what you want.
     
    The only caviat I can think of is that if the OS is being messed with as you say then hopefully the ghost client is still installed and functioning ;)

    Message Edited by David.Poprik on 06-28-200706:00 AM



  • 5.  RE: Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 28, 2007 08:11 PM
    Thanks for all the help, i will try the script on our test area.  As far as changing the OS and the program still tracking the computer, i have found that that is not so.  I did a test on that yesterday because i was curious, i changed a computer from xp sp2 to vista and it lost the computer entirely.  The problem being because when we do a RIS install it wipes the hd including the virtual partitiion, so i am not entirely sure if you mean doing an OS change without wiping the hard drive GSS will keep the computer correctly in the list instead of just saying that it is disconnected when the truth is the virtual partitiion has been wiped off the machine.


  • 6.  RE: Pushing out an Image to a computer VIA MAC Address

    Posted Jun 29, 2007 02:20 AM
    Hi,

    In case of installing even a completely different hard disk will not make the Console to lose track of the client.

    The reason why it was shown disconnected is probably becuase you did not install the client in the new OS. If you install the client (remotely or locally from CD) it will connect to the same machine in Console.

    Virtual partition is only used if it needs to boot to DOS. In that case, it creates a fresh VP every time. VP is not preserved between tasks.

    Krish