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RDMC Client and Software deployment

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RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 9:03:03 AM   
graham_hickson

 

Posts: 3
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Joined: 16/8/2007
Status: offline 		Hi have just been configuring a bunch of new laptops including installing RDMC Client and with software distribution.
I have run in to a situation and was hoping for a bit of clarification.
The laptops include bluetooth, and unfortunately the way the install process works, wireless must be turned on or the bluetooth drivers dont install!  Yes it seems strange to me too, but that's how it is. Once the drivers are installed you can turn wireless off again.
The problem and I've seen some references to it in the forum, is that the client will not install to these machines, but if you turn on wireless the install process works. The client then functions quite happily you can turn wireless off, restart etc all reports normally and good, BUT, when you come to do software deployment, again, fails. It tries to do the wakeup, which of course fails, turn the wireless on, and hey presto it all works, and the install occurs over the wired connection (luckily with 1.5GB of software ).
So I understand what's happening but not clearly why. If I ping the device, it returns the wired address, if I look it up in DHCP the fixed address has the first active lease. How does RDMC decide which address it will use? Is there any way to force it to use the alternate address? Is the lease order important, for instance could I connect wirelessly first and then wired forcing it to pick the newer ip address, or simply do a renew on the wired connection forcing it to have the newer lease?
Thanks for your help
regards
Graham Hickson
Post #: 1
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 9:41:43 AM   
Developer


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Joined: 31/7/2005
Status: offline 		Hi Graham,

Its normal in our experience to have the wireless adapter enabled for bluetooth to install. Its a pain I know. When deploying software via the management console, the console first pings the device to ensure it is active on the network, it pings by name as this is its main identifier. The IP address is returned as part of this ping and it is this address that is used for all future communications with that device. It is the name resolution services (ie: DNS) that returns the IP address of the device name. If DNS returns the wireless IP address of the device as opposed to the wired address then this can cause problems. If you look in DNS you will see two entries for the device name. The problem you are experiencing therefore is that if the wireless adapter is turned off, and DNS has not yet tombstoned that entry then the incorrect IP address is returned and tricks the console into thinking the device is not active on the network.

DHCP is another matter entirely. RDMC only uses DHCP enumeration information for obtaining lists of computers (kind of like a device discovery) and also to retrieve the MAC Address of the devices for use with Wake-ON LAN and hence if there are multiple network interfaces with registered DHCP addresses then the actual MAC address may not be the one that is preferential.

I know none of this solves your problem it merely explains the process used. However we will look into it further to see if we can find a way around this.

Thanks

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(in reply to graham_hickson)
Post #: 2
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 10:20:03 AM   
Developer


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Status: offline 		Graham,

Just a bit more information on this. If you open a command prompt on the laptop you are having problems with and enter the command:

> nslookup <laptopname>

Then you will see that the IP Address returned is the wireless adapters IP Address. Ths name resolution method is the same method used by most such network resolution tools. The thing is Ping seems to be the exception and we dont as yet know why. Even if we did know it wouldnt help because we still have to resolve the name to an IP address and the returned address is what is provided by the network services.

Doing some testing with RDMC Management Console (issuing a ping command to a device) shows that if we do the following we get these results:

1. Wired and Wireless adapter enabled: ping responds and with the wireless adapter IP Address.
2. Wired Adapter enabled Wireless disabled: ping responds with the wired adapter IP Address.
3. Wired adapter disabled Wireless enabled: ping responds with the wireless adapter IP Address.

So the potential issue here is really only software deployments as you say deploying 1.5Gb of software over a wireless network is not ideal. We will do some more research on this and see what comes up.

_____________________________

SOESoft Support Team
SOESoft Pty Ltd
Product Development
support@soesoft.com

Unit 6, 4 Queen St
Bentley 6102
Perth, Western Australia
+61 (0)8 9258 8888
http://www.soesoft.com

(in reply to Developer)
Post #: 3
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 11:00:04 AM   
graham_hickson

 

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Joined: 16/8/2007
Status: offline 		Ok,
so it appears DNS is working ok, as verified by the ping reaching the right adaptor...right

So if the problem is Mac/DHCP based it is probably only the wake on lan component that is failing, so if I deselected wake on Lan when creating the Software Distribution job it should all work properly... And it does! Great.

But the client install still fails, and DNS is working ok right... wrong. For reasons I cannot explain the Ping works from my Vista desktop, but not from the RDMC console, or either of our DNS servers, from whom the Vista machine gets it's info, very peculiar.
And as you had said once the second entry was removed that fixed the client install issue, and the software install problems disappeard as well.

Another interesting day in computer land, still dont get the Vista ping issue (can you say IP version 6 )

Thanks for the help
regards
G:-)

(in reply to Developer)
Post #: 4
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 11:14:45 AM   
Developer


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Status: offline 		Graham,

I have spoken with some of the other developers and the issue doesnt come up anymore because our dynamic layered SOE solution stops the wireless adapter from obtaining an IP lease until the end of the build process. We have a process for applying the wireless security last in our deployments and hence without the security the wireless adapter cannot connect to the network.

There is absolutely nothing we can do about the naming resolution and the IP addresses returned when multiple adapters exist on a computer system. DNS dictates the IP address returned and hence is out of our control. We did some expeiments and pinging a computer with multiple adapters from the command prompt returned the IP Address of the wireless adapter. We believe DNS returns the newest registration which in 99% of all cases will be wireless adapter. This maybe influenced by changing the bind order of the adapters but at this stage we havent tested that theory.

Thanks

_____________________________

SOESoft Support Team
SOESoft Pty Ltd
Product Development
support@soesoft.com

Unit 6, 4 Queen St
Bentley 6102
Perth, Western Australia
+61 (0)8 9258 8888
http://www.soesoft.com

(in reply to Developer)
Post #: 5
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 11:19:51 AM   
Developer


Posts: 165
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Joined: 31/7/2005
Status: offline 		I understand your frustration. We have lots of horrible problems with Vista as well. I ran the ping test fom a Vista machine and an XP machine and I got different results. The issue with the Wake-ON LAN is a pain because when we enumerate DHCP that has multiple registrations for the same computer but with different MAC addresses then its the MAC address of the last entry in the returned list that is used. If this happens to be the wireless adapter then its generally not an issue so long as the adapter supports WOL. DHCP does not store any information regarding the adapter type so we cant discriminate between inbuilt wired adapters and other types of adapters.

_____________________________

SOESoft Support Team
SOESoft Pty Ltd
Product Development
support@soesoft.com

Unit 6, 4 Queen St
Bentley 6102
Perth, Western Australia
+61 (0)8 9258 8888
http://www.soesoft.com

(in reply to graham_hickson)
Post #: 6
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 12:54:13 PM   
graham_hickson

 

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Joined: 16/8/2007
Status: offline 		So is the MAC address retrieved from DHCP at regular intervals, or is it stored from first connect? 

If it's dynamic would it be possible to add ranges of the MAC manufacturer ID, (the first 6 hex numbers in the mac from memory) to ignore as they are mostly different between the 2 network cards, even if it was just for the distribution process?

Great product by the way. The more I use it, the more I like it, and the larger my butts going to get.

(in reply to Developer)
Post #: 7
RE: RDMC Client and Software deployment - 10/10/2007 7:26:27 PM   
Developer


Posts: 165
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Joined: 31/7/2005
Status: offline 		The MAC address is retrieved whenever a DHCP scope is enumerated in the console, or if a static collection has a DHCP server/scope assigned to it (dynamic collection). Whenever the static collection is enumerated by any RDMC process the dynamic source is also enumerated and in the case of DHCP the MAC Address is retrieved and stored in the Site Share against that device record. This is done so that other functions can read the MAC address quickly and perform actions based on it in. Because MAC addresses dont normally change for a computing device the information is stored and reused rather than obtaining it from DHCP constantly. This is because DHCP is difficult and slow to work with programmatically.

Alternatively if the MAC address is not present in the device record the management console will do a lookup in the inventory records for that device an extract it (this is a bit slower). This requires that an inventory has been performed on the target devices of course.

To work around this problem what we will do is look into storing multiple MAC addresses where they exist. So if a device has a MAC address for its wired adapter and the wireless we will record and sotre both. Then when it comes to Wake-ON LAN time its no problem to issue the magic packet to both MAC Addresses. One or the other will work.

We will look at adding this for our up and coming V7 release.

Thanks for giving us the nudge on this one!

_____________________________

SOESoft Support Team
SOESoft Pty Ltd
Product Development
support@soesoft.com

Unit 6, 4 Queen St
Bentley 6102
Perth, Western Australia
+61 (0)8 9258 8888
http://www.soesoft.com

(in reply to graham_hickson)
Post #: 8
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