Deployment Solution

Hi all,

I'm new to altiris and i've just begun my scripted OS install.

Currently I have the my computers successfully pxe booting into WinPE where they successfully connect to the eXpress share. From there the agent successfully updates and RDeploy pops up briefly. After this the computer reboots and automatically reconnects into the WinPE image. However on doing this it seems to go through the exact same process again. The script does not seem to format the  hard drive because the old OS is still on the machine and the scripted OS does not begin.

I've read that some people are using custom format scripts should I use one of these and if so does someone have a basic one to format the whole drive into NTFS or the required format needed and then connect to the eXpress share and begin the OS download.

Any help is appreciated.

Byron

All my client says is

Starting Agent X:\dagent\dagent.exe
Location Agent

Call custom actions

Then when the window pops up it goes through a number of things and finishes with the following.

Connection Closed, Session terminated

When it reboots it goes through the same thing again. What am I missing here?

Further to this I deleted the computer account out of the altiris deployment console and when the computer boots up it automatically boots into the WinPE boot image and waits until I provide it with a job.

As soon as I provide it with my scripted OS job it says Connection Closed, Session terminated and then it reboots and goes back into the loop I mentioned above.

Please help if you can.

Further to this again I have now rebooted the server as suggested by other users with no luck and I've also removed the teaming from my network cards as this was also mentioned as having an impact.

One user mentioned that the ticket in the altiris client could be answering the machine before the DS has the chance to. Is anybody able to suggest to me how I would go about checking this. Also the version of altiris we are using is 6.9 (Build 164)

Anybody that can help on this?

Are you using the Deployment Solution scripted os install process or the Deployment Solution for Dell Servers scripted OS install process?

Hi Eorme,

I'm using the deployment solution scripted os install with just a base windows XP Volume licence install. I've just had a colleage try to deploy a ghost image of him which he is having the same problems with.

If i delete the machine out of the deployment server then when the machine boots it will launch into pxe and into the winpe image and the sit and wait. As soon as I drag and drop it onto any job it just restarts itself and doesn't do anything.

I'm not very aquainted with the Deployment Solution's default Scripted OS install, but I'm more aquainted with the Deployment Solution for Dell Servers scripted OS install process.

You said "As soon as I drag and drop it onto any job it just restarts itself and doesn't do anything."  If a machine reboots as soon as you drag a job on it and the job didn't finish executing with success for failure, it means that the preboot environment it was in is not the one that the jobs is associated to run in, so it is rebooting to try to get into that environment so it can run.

Hi eorme

Thanks again for the replies I really appreciated someone offering me some new ideas. Just to note that this issue is happing with capturing a ghost image, deploying a ghost image and scripted OS. Basically whatever type of job it restarts.

In particular though I've had a look at my scripted os install and its default selected the winpe managed preboot environment which is the one i'm using. This is redirected on the local pxe server to the winpe location preboot environment.

We are operating in a multi site environment where the DS server is on a site that is not my own. So i'm testing in the other sites to see if it works there or not. Could this be a possible IP helper issue?

My other question is also using DFS replication is it possible for me to replication the DS share to my site that i can use it locally? Will this cause any issues?

Further to this i've tested in one of our other offices and it worked.

What I noticed about our setup was that we were redirecting to a local boot image. We removed the redirect and we have had success. So it seems at this point the only time we can get it to work is when we use the shared boot image with no redirect. Are there any issues with this? I'm not sure. It will still use our local pxe server won't it as the boot images a replicated?

From what I see there is no difference in load times.

So my question is, our DS is in a different location. So how do I deploy a scripted OS when the DS share is in a remote location. It will take too long to download the image and install? Is there a way around this. Can we use DFS replication as I mentioned above but if we do how do I point my scripts to install from there?

Byronjt,

So you're saying that your eXpress share is in a remote location and that the connection to that remote connection is slow, at least slow enough where pulling an image from it is not practical.  Do I understand you correctly?

Is there a reason why your DS can't be local?  Have you looked at the multicast capabilities of DS?  The extra time it takes to transfer from the remote location could be made up by imaging all machines at once.

Hi Eorme,

Yes you understand me perfectly.

Unfortunately the DS has to be at the remote site as that is one of our primary sites with a greater user base. At this point i've been looking at using a  custom script rather than the built in scripted OS as it seems to provide more flexibility. That way I can tell my script where to copy the install files ie. the location of my choice. I'm using the following article to assist me with this, have you seen this before and would you recommend the solution given?

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/quicker-scripted-os-install

At this point I've just run a test using the scripted OS install and downloading the files from a remote site and its taken 10-15 minutes to copy the image down. In the above example it copies an image down which is NTFS formatted and has the install files located on the image already. I think this would be the faster option and the best moving forward.

Byronjt,

Using custom scripts to perform a scripted OS install like in the link you posted seems logical to me.  The scripted os process I'm most aquainted with is the process included with Deployment Solution for Dell Servers and that's pretty much all run script tasks.

So yes, you can perform scripted os installs through run script tasks, and in fact I would recommend taking a look at the scripts with DS for Dell as a starting point (they're is nothing Dell specific in the scripted OS install portion.)  If you do write a custom scripted OS install yes, you can install from anywhere you want, just map the drive in preboot and voila.

You can go ahead and try what's in that article, I'm not sure how much speed you'll get though.  One sure way to get speed however is to set up a local cache of some sort that will mirror the OS source files from your remote location locally.  That'd be my first recommendation.

Thanks for  your help so far eorme,

Where would i find the dell script tasks that you mentioned?

Below I have a copy of the script I have created which is working to a point.

Basically I have it working to the point that it copies the XP files to the hard drive. However once it has completed this it reloops into my script and continues to copy the XP files again. Have you seen this issue before? Would this be something to do with my unattended settings?

My script below basically runs some commands based on the IP address it finds the location i'm at and sets the appropriate drive within my winpe boot environment. It then sets the appropriate values and sets off the install. Can you see any reason as to why this is constantly looping through my script and never getting to the step of Installing windows? I didn't seem to have this issue with the default scripted OS install.


@echo off

REM Scripted OS

Set Count=

ipconfig | find "IPv4 Address" > TEMP_MyIPAddress.txt

for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=:" %%i in (TEMP_MyIPAddress.txt) do echo %%j >> TEMP_MyIPAddress2.txt

for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=." %%i in (TEMP_MyIPAddress2.txt) do call :IPAddressFound %%j

REM del TEMP_MyIPAddress.txt
REM del TEMP_MyIPAddress2.txt

:IPAddressFound
Set Count=%Count%Y
echo Address found, third octet is %1
set ipaddressloc=%1

if "%ipaddressloc%"=="30" set server=H:
if "%ipaddressloc%"=="20" set server=F:
if "%ipaddressloc%"=="22" set server=F:
if "%ipaddressloc%"=="70" set server=G:

C:
md altiris
cd altiris
md aclient
md files
cd files
md sp
cd \
copy %server%\altiris\a5000660.txt c:\altiris\files\unattend.txt
copy %ALTIRIS_SHARE%\agents\aclient\altiris-aclient-6.9.164.X86.exe c:\altiris\aclient\aclient.exe
copy %server%\altiris\c5000660.inp c:\altiris\aclient\aclient.inp
%server%
cd \
cd altiris\deploy\WinOS001\i386
WINNT32.EXE /unattend:c:\altiris\files\unattend.txt /s:%server%\altiris\deploy\WinOS001\i386 /noreboot /syspart:C:

This is fairly easy to do.  Just add the below text to the script.  This script assumes that you want the 3rd octet in the IP (i.e. if your IP is 192.168.2.23, your subnet would be considered 2 and it would direct the script to goto SITE2, if your IP is 192.168.3.23, your subnet would be considered 3 and maybe you don't have a local server there so you don't want the script to run, so it would goto the NOSCRIPT area).  Hope this helps.  Also this assumes that the script is running in windows, otherwise you may want to use the "getsrv" option in Linux, WinPE or DOS.

for /f "tokens=2 delims=:" %%a in ('ipconfig ^| find "IP Address"') do set IP=%%a
for /f "tokens=3 delims=." %%j in ('echo %IP%') do set SUBNET=%%j

IF %SUBNET% == 1 goto SITE1
IF %SUBNET% == 2 goto SITE2
GOTO NOSCRIPT

:SITE1
net use g: \\siteserver1\share /user:username:password
goto script

:SITE2
net use g: \\siteserver2\share /user:username:password
goto script

:SCRIPT
INSERT SCRIPT HERE
goto END

:NOSCRIPT
REM No valid subnets found

:END

This was a big help thanks bhawver.

Something in my script was causing the windows xp installer to loop and never reboot to the actaul installation.

I used your script and modified it to my own network and I've just tested successfully now.

Now to get the drivers to load -s