In the OS Configuration part the IP configuration needs to be applied and I decided to do this with a database.

The database consists of 2 tables; one table with the per host settings and one table with the global settings (such as DNS).

In the Altiris job both tables are read from an embedded VBScript and assigned to the NIC.

Database configuration

I created a database (SQL Server) called IPManagement with 2 tables:

The globalconfig table has a name and a data field:

And contains only the DNS settings:

The hostconfig table has fields for hostname, ip address, netmask and default gateway:

Some sample data:

Altiris Configuration

In Altiris I have added the database as a custom data source, this can be done via Tools | Options | Custom Data Sources:

The Script:

The final step is the VBScript, which use the Custom Token feature to retreive the data from the database:

Note that I had to do a little trick using the Trim statement and a space to get a correct assignment to the variables. Without the space Altiris doesn’t properly recognize the custom token.

The array is necessary beasue the EnableStatic and SetGateways Methods require array parameters even when there’s just a single entry.

The documentation doesn’t mention some things that are worth knowing so I will try to address them in this post.

Sysprep support can be added to Altiris during the install where it will ask you for the Sysprep install files (deploy.cab) per selected OS.

If you didn’t add Sysprep during install you can copy deploy.cab to one of subfolders in the Sysprep folder. Eg for 32 bit Windows 2003 deploy.cab goes to Sysprep\DotNet\x86:

As I wrote earlier in this post it’s very important to use the correct Sysprep version as each OS has it’s own version.

As a general rule you should grab the deploy.cab from the install media (in the Support folder).

Creating Images:

When creating Images you can activate Sysprep support by setting the “Prepare using Sysprep” checkbox:

If you do not need to perform special configuration for you mass storage (eg add drivers) you can select “Disable mass storage device support” under Advanced Settings.

This will make the initial Sysprep run a little faster:

Optionally you can select an Automation environment, I like the LinuxPE option since it’s boots fast like the DOS option but still as fast imaging like Windows PE.

A few earlier post regarding PXE Boot that may be useful:
• STOP: 0x0000005D when booting Windows PE
• Compiling Drivers for Altiris Linux PXE Image Part 1
• Compiling Drivers for Altiris Linux PXE Image Part 2

When you schedule a Create Image task with Sysprep activated, Altiris will copy the files in the deploy.cab to C:\Sysprep on the target computer and run Sysprep.

It will also copy a default sysprep.inf file that is used to restore the target computer after imaging. But where does this sysprep.inf file come from?

The Sysprep folder is populated with some default answer files, named standard<os version>.inf:

So I assumed it would select the answer file based on the selected OS version. I selected Windows 2003 in my Job:

So I assumed it would copy standard2003.inf but instead it always seems to copy standardxp.inf.

If you cannot use this file, eg because you have differing files per OS you can copy a sysprep anwer file after the create image job.

If you want to do this using Linux a sample command would be:

Deploying Images

In the Deploy Images task you can enable Sysprep support in the same manner:

But this time the Advanced Settings buttons allows us to select a custom Sysprep Answer file:

In the Answer file we can use both Default and Custom tokens, Altiris will replace them to the actual values before injecting it.

An example of using the Tokens is using the name in the Altiris Console as the new Computer Name:

Another place where this feature comes in handy is the AdminPassword key in the GuiUnattended section:

%ADMIN_PASSWORD% is not a default token so you must enter the password in the user_tokens table:

The password is stored securely because a regular user shouldn’t be able to access the eXpress database directly.

Note that I also tried to use an encrypted password in the answer file (setupmgr.exe allows you to do so) but this results in an error message during Sysprep which will halt the process until you click OK.

This behavior is documented here.

Note: if you use the HP branded version of Altiris a simple User Tokens Editor is included in the Tools | HP Tools menu.

Multiple Disks

By default Altiris will only create or deploy an image of the first disk. If you want to create or deploy images for multiple disks you can create a second task and use the -d<number> parameter.

The “Do not boot to Production” option will ensure that the second image is created directly after the first disk image:

When restoring multiple disks, the easiest way is to restore the extra disk(s) first by using the -d<number> parameter again.

Deselect “Automatically perform configuration task after completing this imaging task“:

The system disk image must be the last one restored and there you enable both configuration options:

(Don’t forget to select the Sysprep Answer file using the Advanced Settings option)

Compared to what I needed to do for Linux this was a breeze!

First we need the VMWare tools again so I grabbed windows.iso from /vmimages/tools-isomages.

The driver files are in a cab file, VMXNET3.cab, extract this cab file somewhere and open the Altiris PXE Configuration tool.

Select the Windows PE Entry and click Edit:

Then click Edit Boot Image:

In the Boot Disk Creator right click and select Edit Configuration:

Click Next:

Click Have Disk:

Browse to the folder where you extract the cab file, I choose the NDIS5 driver since it’s probably the most compatible version:

Select the appropriate platform and click OK:

Finish the Wizard and upload the modified image to your PXE Server and that’s really all!

So now we can finally compile the driver, in my case I needed a driver for VMWare’s VMXNET3 Network Card.

VMXNET3 is VMWare’s paravirtualized network driver and offers better performance with less host processing power compared to the default e1000 driver.

First we need the source for the driver, we can obtain this from the VMWare Tools either from a running Linux VM or like I did by transferring the file linux.iso from /vmimages/tools-isomages from the vSphere server.

In the iso file is a single file, VMWARETO.TGZ and after unpacking we get a folder called vmware-tools-distrib.

In vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source we find the vmxnet3.tar file that contains our sources. Copy the tar to the Virtual Machine and unpack it, then start a Terminal and cd to the directory where you unpacked the tar.

The first time I attempted a compile I received an error indicating that the file autoconf.h could not be found. After I found this bug report I was able to fix this by creating a link:

We can compile the driver with the make command, referencing the kernel image we created earlier:

After the compile we need to copy the .ko file, in my case vmxnet3.ko to the Altiris server, it needs to be placed in

And the final step is to rebuild the PXE Image, goto the PXE Configuration Manager and select Linux in the Regenerate Boot Images part and click Regenerate:

When the regeneration has been completed you must click Save and wait until all servers are updated:

In the Status tab you can check the Progress (this may take a while!):

And when it’s updated, boot the VM and check:

For your convenience the compiled binary can be downloaded below (but do know that if probably only works on the same kernel version).

At the time of writing Ubuntu 10.10 was the Latest version so I used that one.

Create a new Virtual Machine and use the iso as install media, I am using VMWare Workstation and it recognises Ubuntu and performs an “easy install”:

The install is unattended (when VMWare Tools are installed you need to perform a login) and took only 6 minutes on my laptop!

Now we need to install gcc (the compiler), open the Ubuntu Software Center:

Select Get Software | Developer Tools, search for GCC and select The GNU C Compiler from the list and click Install:

Authenticate with the root password:

Optionally install g++ as well:

Now we need to download the Kernel version that is used in the Altiris PXE environment.

Check the required version by starting the Boot Disk Creator and select Tools | Install Preboot Operating Systems (in my case it’s 2.6.27.7):

Open FireFox in the Virtual Machine and goto http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ and download the file for your version (in my case linux-2.6.27.7.tar.gz).

FireFox suggests to open it with the Archive Manager which is fine:

Extract the files using the Archive Manager to your home directory (I choose the Documents folder).

Now we need to obtain the config file, the easiest way is to manually boot into Linux Automation and copy the file to the eXpress share (cp /proc/config.gz /mnt/ds).

Copy this file to the directory where you extracted the kernel (in mycase /home/rweijnen/documents/linux-2.6.27.7).

Now start a Terminal via Accessories | Terminal:

cd to the directory where you extracted the kernel and extract the config.gz file (gzip -d config.gz) and then rename the config file to .config (mv config .config):

Now build the kernel (make bzImage modules):

I got a question about Removable Drive Bay, I choose N since it doesn’t seem necessary:

The build may take some time!

In part 2 we will compile the driver and integrate it into the PXE Image.

0x0000005D means UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR (defined in bugcodes.h) so I expected there was a x86 vs x64 problem.

The VM was configured for a 32 bit OS:

The Altiris Job was configured to use Auto Select:

But instead of the x86 version of Windows PE, Altiris attempts to boot the x64 version and this explains the BSOD: VMWare prevents the CPU from going to x64 mode and thus Windows has no choice but to halt.

Workaround is to change the Automation pre-boot environment in Altiris to x86:

Note that it’s no problem to deploy an x64 OS using the x86 version of Windows PE so I don’t see any real problems with this workaround.

I wrote scripts for Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 that I deploy from my Altiris Server.

This is the script for Windows 2003:

They are shown in the Computers Tree with the Inactive state icon:

The fastest way to resolve this is to restart the “Altiris Deployment Agent” service.

I wrote a little commandline tool to make this easy for myself, it’s called AClientFix.

If you don’t specify any parameters it will restart the services on the local machine. If you specify a Computername as parameter it will restart the services of a remote machine (admin rights needed of course).

Actually the script isn’t specific to Citrix or Terminal Server but on such environments we need to preload all drivers because users do not have the permissions to do that.

I have chosen for PowerShell because you can do it in a one-liner which makes it easy to run this script from my Altiris server on all Citrix Servers.

The idea is that we enumerate all the shared printers on a Printer Server and make a connection to each printer. This will make sure that the driver is installed if it wasn’t already present.

The script could even be scheduled to enforce that newly added printer drivers are added to each Citrix Server.

To enumerate all printers we can use the Win32_Printer WMI class like this:

It’s possible that some printers are not shared so we are going to filter that out using the -filter parameter:

Our next step is to make a printer connection and MSDN shows that the win32_printer class has an AddPrinterConnection method.

So I first tried:

I am not sure of the exact reason but obviously there is no access to the AddPrinterConnection method.

This works though:

Now we can use the For-Each Object to make a connection to each printer using the __SERVER property for the servername and the ShareName property for the Printername:

Once again I met a PowerShell oddity: I couldn’t use AddPrinterConnection(“\\$_.__SERVER\$_.ShareName”) so I used:

And finally we put the whole thing in a one liner, replacing double quote (“) with (‘) and using the gwmi alias to make the line shorter:

EDIT: In order to load new driver we need to enable the SeLoadDriverPrivilege. I have corrected the code above,  see Enabling Privileges for WMI in PowerShell for an explanation.

This Kofax software comes with an .msi file but there was no documentation on the install options.

In fact it didn’t seem like the Vendor anticipated on an Unatttended Install.

I browsed in the msi file using Microsoft’s Orca tool and tried some of the properties I found in the public properties table.

The VRSMODE property relates to the options in the first dialog:

The CONFIGSCANNERLATER2 property corresponds to this dialog (there is also a CONFIGSCANNERLATER property but it seems to have no effect):

So my complete install line was: