|
| Guests can view and read messages in the community forums, but you must register and log in to Deployment Forum before you can post messages. Click Register at the top of this page. Before posting messages, please read the forum guidelines at the bottom of this page. | |
| | Author | Messages | |
JCadavid
Posts:61
 | | 10/09/2008 8:38 AM |
| | Hi All, I have been banging my head on the wall for a few days on this one. My boss has given me the directive to try and add VNC to the PE ISO environment so that I can remote control the session. We are using this in conjunction with vPro and the intention is to be able to remote control the PE environment. I can't get it to work for what ever reason. The service registers and starts no problem, I also import the registry settings properly, but for what ever reason, it refuses to accept an incoming connection. Any thoughts? | | | |
| C Barrett
Posts:19
| | 10/12/2008 5:38 AM |
| I have to say I really like the idea but can't offer any help with it...just thinking aloud though...how would you know the hostname of the remote system so you could VNC to it? As WinPE with MDT/BDD assigns a "MININT-random" name to the system when initialized...?
You can connect to the IP address using VNC but again this could be difficult to discover if you have a numerous machines starting up in PE etc??
Sorry if vPro sorts this problem out for you, it's something I'd like to see but we don't have it in our environment...
If I get chance I'll try and test this out just to see if what you're trying to do will actually work as it could be a great additional tool  | | | |
| JCadavid
Posts:61
| | 10/14/2008 8:05 AM |
| Hi Barrett,
I guess one could create a script that could report back with the computer name and IP address to the session that was created within PE. Ultimately, what we are shooting for is remote deployments on the idea of ZTD, but, we are not ready to get there just yet. Since we have 190 remote locations, calls to tech's to drive around and manually image the machines gets pretty costly, so we are looking to drive down that expense.
The theory is that you boot into the PE environment and drive it remotely, instead of having a body doing it on site. This way we can have a tech kick off an install, and still be free to do remote tech support for other users as well. I know in the Deployment Workbench, the section for Windows PE Customizations has a section for Extra Directories to add. Is this where I would add the CAB's and inf files for the plugins that I want to use? Just a stretch. I would definitely be interested in what you find.
Thanks!!!
-Johnny | | | |
| FarmerPete
Posts:168
| | 10/15/2008 7:46 AM |
| | At my company we almost never use tech initiated VNC connections. We always have the users "invite" us on by right clicking on the VNC icon and selecting "Add new client". They then type in the technicians hostname, and then their screen pops up onto my computer. I'm sure a similar system could be scripted to connect to the technicians computer instead of the technician connecting to the client. | | | |
| jbrixey
Posts:9
| | 10/15/2008 1:54 PM |
| | I am not sure if this is even possible, but as you need to have a technician/user of some kind at the physical machine to kick off the process whether by PXE or CD/DVD media that point is pretty moot. You can begin the process with a user on the distant end doing a refresh (running LiteTouch.vbs from the wdsserver\distributionshare$\scripts\). Giving the users that are starting a deployment a SOP to follow as to what task sequence they need to use to start their process can streamline the deployment. By configuring the computer in the MDT database ahead of time you can eliminate the need for the user to select applications or options minimizing the mistakes that are introduced during the deployment. For true "zero touch" you will have to use SCCM or some other type of deployment solution (Landesk, Altiris). MDT was never intended to be zero touch without these solutions, and even SCCM requires a technician to start a bare metal build from PXE. | | | |
| FarmerPete
Posts:168
| | 10/16/2008 9:08 AM |
| vPro (Intel AMT) will allow you to have bios level access to the computer from remote. So you could kick of the PXE boot using that. The trouble is, you could get into WinPE, you just can't configure anything once inside. Thus the reasoning for using VNC.
| | | |
| jbrixey
Posts:9
| | 10/16/2008 1:25 PM |
| | A possible work around would be to change the version of windows PE that is being used for the deployment process. From what I recall, the PE environment has always been intended for command line interface only, so the shell is stripped down to nothing. Winternals used the XP-based PE with a custom shell to create their rescue disks, so it probably is possible to do the same for PE 2.0, but don't know how much work you want to do towards that goal. I don't know if it has been tried or is possible, but changing the WDS server to use a different boot image based on a customized version of a BartPE build with the vnc client plugin might work. The trick would be to turn the iso into a boot wim, but that might get complicated and leave you in the same boat you are in now. Food for thought anyway. | | | |
| bhicks
Posts:1
| | 10/16/2008 4:01 PM |
| We have been utilizing the same solution within MDT with vPro. With vPro, you obviously know the IP or are able to retrieve it easily. We PXE boot the system using vPro, which launches our LT/ZT WIM that has VNC enabled. Then we remote in and finish or watch the process.
When you are trying to start the VNC server in startnet.cmd, your networking configuration has not yet started. That is why if you manually kick it off once MDT loads into PE, it works, but through startnet it does not. We created a script that handled the following for VNC:
1) Disable the PE 2 Firewall = "wpeutil DisableFirewall"<---This had us running in circles for hours
2) Configure the registry entries
3) Start the VNC service
To have this start after the network configuration was loaded, we added a section of code to the LiteTouch.wsf script. Do a find command for "cmd.exe", which is where the second command prompt is opened and minimized. Just below that, add your own section of code to launch the VNC script, we even added logging just in case.
For those of you without vPro, we used a small script that would internally email/page a technician with the IP address after MDT was loaded and ready for credentials. Once they received the IP, they could remote in with the VNC service already started and ready to go. | | | |
| FarmerPete
Posts:168
| | 10/17/2008 8:17 AM |
| | I ran into WinPE not waiting for the network to be initialized, and I found an excellent walkthrough on how to make it wait at the following website: http://jasonmlee.net/archives/289 | | | |
| canni
Posts:8
| | 10/18/2008 1:22 AM |
| simple "wpeutil DisableFirewall" as stated above.
Plus to save trouble on having to importing the reg settings. Use latest version of UltraVNC. it uses .INI for config rather then reg entries. | | | |
| JCadavid
Posts:61
| | 10/20/2008 3:08 PM |
| | Thank you so very much bhicks and canni. UltraVNC works like a charm. I am so excited!!!! Thank you again! | | | |
|
| | You are not authorized to post a reply. |
|
| |
ActiveForums 3.7 | |
|  | These forums are a user-supported community for IT professionals to exchange deployment tips, solutions, and techniques. For the benefit of all Deployment Forum members, please observe the following guidelines when posting to these forums: - We reserve the right to remove any message. Our moderators will remove all messages that are not respectful or productive. Profanity, racism, prejudice, and flaming are not tolerated.
- Do not advertise products or services. Our moderators will remove all advertisements or service announcements. Product and service recommendations from active Deployment Forum members are encouraged, however.
- Make sure your question isn't already answered. Before posting questions, search the forums. After ensuring that your questions are unique, post them to the most appropriate forum. This will help reduce noise in the forums.
- Help make the most of each thread. Do not post unrelated messages to a thread. Also, if you've resolved a question outside of these forums, please share the solution with other members by posting it back to the thread.
- Do not share confidential information. Confidential information includes product keys and addresses. Our moderators will edit any message containing confidential information, so double-check messages and their attachments before posting them.
- Post messages using only the English language. For the benefit of all Deployment Forum members, please post your messages using the English language.
We hope that you enjoy using this community. Please submit your comments and feedback on the Comments and Feedback page or post them to the Comments, Feedback forum. |
| |
| |
|