RM CC3 Package Tool

[Barcrest]

Hi guys. I am in the process of working on a tool to aid with package management on a CC3 network. This post is really to test the water to see if anyone else would be interested in this kind of app or not really.

 

At the moment it provides a list of machines with package Install/Uninstall Failures on and a list of packages where there has been an Install/Uninstall issue.

 

You can resend the individual package to all effected machines, remove the package from the stations list, or re-activate the Install/Uninstall process across your entire site for all effected packages.

 

I am looking to develop this further if there is sufficient interest and i will make it availble for free to anyone interested in using it.

[webman]

That looks quite useful, thanks... would definitely be interested in a released version

[Barcrest]

Well i wrote it because i was having issues where i would deploy a package to the site or even a room and it would only install on 80% of the machines. All the managment console lets you do is re-allocate and that installs on all the machines again, so with this tool it only re-tries the machines that have failed.

 

Another use was when i sent out the new Acrobat Reader package, the old one didn't uninstall. However the new one had installed so i used this tool to remove the old information from the workstations. This is so you don't end up with a huge list of uninstall failed for things that have in effect worked. The same with flash, the old one didn't uninstall but the new one upgrades the old one and as long as that worked i don't need to know about uninstall failed for the old package.

 

Anyway i am still tweaking it a little but i should be able to upload a test version later this week if you want a look. It has really saved me a load of time today sorting out old package removal and getting some machines up to date with the current packages.

 

At the moment it doesn't work by room, that is something i think would be really useful to get in there and i will be looking at that tomorrow.

 

Thanks for you interest

[webman]

There's a couple of utilities that have some of that functionality for CC3 - listed in this recent thread, but your app does look promising.

[Barcrest]

Ah yes that looks like someone is coding something simular. Mine is already working and i just added a check box to reboot the machines automatically it changes the ini files for. This can be if you re-allocate a specific failed package or across the site. I have also added a buton to reboot a selected machine from the treeview.

 

I just need to add the code to check that the user is systemadmin before running the app and maybe a splashscreen and i should be able to make a release. I'l put it on my website when i get home and post a link up here for you to try it out.

[webman]

I hope you mean a a system administrator user - and not just hardcoded to the systemadmin username

[Barcrest]

Well i was going to hard code it to the user name but you are right i need to do it to a user type. I also ned to add a small ini file so you can configure the path to your RMPackages folder.

 

I am just working on the wake on lan code right now. I will get the ini file stuff done to, i actually never thought about that. DOH!

[webman]

Sounds good

 

There's myself and the Network Manager here who both deal with all aspects of the network; and we use different logon accounts. I remember some functionality within the Win32 API to see if they are an 'administrator' usertype, but this might be different to the group-based membership of an AD network though and you will probably have some method of identifying that

[meastaugh1]

You could just rely on packagecontrol's NTFS permissions. Just get your app to check whether the user has permission to write to the folder. I believe the management types which can modify package allocation are sysadmins, network, and possibly authorised.

[Barcrest]

Well now i see why lanview 3 went with the client server option. If i try and re-boot the workstation using the API call it will appear to hang for several seconds if the machine doesn't respond to the call. This might be because the PC is off or doing something else. I added code to only attempt a re-boot if the machine was actually switched on but it will still hang if the machine doesn't respond to the call due it being busy doing something else.

 

I have spent an hour trying to resolve this but i haven't really gotten anywhere. Looks like the re-boot automatically option and the Wake On Lan will involve a little more coding that i thought so i might make the release without the wake on lan and with the auto-reboot disabled. You can still re-boot machines manually by selecting from the treeview.

 

I will add a basic ini file so you can specify a path to your RMPackages folder and post it up. Then while i am trying to get the re-boot ad wake on lan stuff sorted i can at least get some feedback.

[Barcrest]

Here is an early version then, it's actually the current build. Any questions fel free to ask, and ideas feel free to post them.

 

On the whole it does work for me, YMMV

 

NOTE: You need to open the ini file in note pad and put the UNC name in to point to your RMPackages folder.

packagemaster.zip

[Guest metalmonkey]

Well now i see why lanview 3 went with the client server option.

 

Exactly - Windows has always had appalling network RPC support. Even WMI is unbelievably slow.

 

Thats why LanView2 started using the client/server model and I didn't even look at using Windows native network RPC for LV3 when I started it.

[Netware]

very interested in seeing the out come of this, please keep us posted

[nicholab]

Will try it tomorrow very good for the update season. Why RM could not have done this I wonder. The market seem to be solving the problems what about a open source CC4 now that would be good.

[Barcrest]

To be honest i have been so busy using it, i havn't really added anything. I do have a list of machines that are currently on the network displayed to cross reference when re-booting i think i need to add icons to the treeview to show if the machine is online or not. Also i don't need to add machines to the treeview that don't have any issues.

 

These are the next things i will work on.

[russdev]

Will try it tomorrow very good for the update season. Why RM could not have done this I wonder. The market seem to be solving the problems what about a open source CC4 now that would be good.

 

First it is part of cc4 as in cc4 the rmmc has gone through major redesign includes this and more...

 

As for 'opensource cc3' you not first person to think of it heck there was even a project on sourceforge. But problem like lot of these projects unless you got some near fulltime developer aka people developing this as part of there day job they die a death.

 

What you have got to remember is everyone including RM went through major learning curve as it was change from nt to windows 2000 when they released cc3.

 

One of the issues RM had was lack of updates to RMMC interface and think in hindsight they would say the same.

 

But this came in time when RM was going through major upheaval and for some very good reasons projects like that had to be put on back burner.

 

By time RM had got some on internal stuff sorted. People like Kevin and various others had come along with projects to address the need.

 

So common sense approach was to say ok we can't play catchup with cc3 so lets log everything people have said about rmmc and other areas and implement it in CC4.

 

and here ends history lesson

 

Russell

[Barcrest]

That's fair enough.

 

However i think the real reason people do not carry on developing applications like this one is a financial one. The one i posted up here was basically a days worth of work and it did what i needed to help me with my package roll out. I could obviously go on and develop this into a management console replacement by adding some AD front end stuff which is all the Management console really is but what would be the incentive.

 

I think a lot of these apps develop to fix a specific problem and that is the incetive however once that has been fulfilled there is nothing to drive further development.

 

To be honest i'm late to the party and if i had written this 3 years ago it might have been worth while doing a complete management console replacement but now i think most people will move across to CC4

[Netware]

Hi, going to give this a try....thanks again

[PaulBM]

Following all the massive problems we've had since the latest CC3 update over the summer, this program could well be a life saver for us.

 

I'm trying it now, we have hundreds of failed packages across over 200 machines!

[Jamoire]

Wish I had read this thread before I started writing my own version of this

[dgsmith]

I got on the bandwagen early and released PackMan around July 2006. The only thing i'd liked to have added was AD capabilities, but as was mentioned in a previous post, developing these kind of tools to fully-blown software solutions isn't really worthwhile with CC4 just around the corner, although the one I worked on has come along way since last year.