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Z.E.N. Clone for Linux?
mwknight asks: "The school district where I work has servers that were patched together with different versions of Novell and NT over the past few years. Management is ready to start over and re-design our network from scratch using Novell 5 servers and Win95/98 clients. I would rather see us go with Linux for the servers, but my biggest opposition is Novell's Z.E.N. Works. Is there a Linux program that behaves similar to ZEN? Mainly something that can remote update software to Win95 boxes? "
If management feels like ZENworks is a good idea, it's because it is :) If you use ZENworks properly, you'll be able to spend more time messing with linux and less time dealing with your customers. I don't ever visit people's desks anymore- ZEN remote control lets me do everything from my desk, and the help desk component keeps people from calling me all the time- their requests just show up in my email box. When you're not OS religious, you tend to get a lot more done. Linux is a good server, but if you have the money, Novell is a very well made product that will get the job done better than most, and managing the windows workstations is just something you can't do as well from a linux solution. What you CAN do, if you want... You could have samba fileservers, and install your application bundles from there. NetWare doesn't care where the application stuff is, so long as it is accessible through UNC addresses (e.g. \\server\volume). Why I don't recommend this... NetWare seems to be faster at serving than Linux, especially when moving around the ZENworks files, and especially to win98 clients. The netware client works especially well when you're doing workstation management, which is usually an issue for people who are working in school environments. It is awesome when you don't have to rebuild someone's machine, since there's no way they can break it... and if it breaks of its own accord, you can stick another basic machine in its place, and it will simply receive all the app packages as people use the workstation. When used and taken care of properly, NetWare 5/ZENworks is one of the best solutions out there for serving and managing windows PCs. You'll save all that time you used to spend walking around to workstations, reloading windows, installing new software, etc.... playing with linux instead. Keep in mind, you can use Linux on *your* desktop just fine. Caldera makes netware client and admin utilities (that are still in development, mind you) that are pretty good, and for everything else you can use NT in a VMware session to do it, or just have another pc in your desk. Learning to use ZENworks properly is worth it, and will make your users *very* happy.. then you can get back to reading /.
Apparently some people don't know what ZEN can do. I think it a great product. We use it and we can do so much more because it makes our lives easier. Zen can lock the machines down and fix apps when people erase them or screw with them. I personally like the idea of being able to use a computer when i need it at school
You can do exactly this, because I have. Install Win9x, install common apps, install Netware client, make a c:\masters directory with all of your hardware drivers, copy the main INF files into c:\windows\inf, THEN delete all plug n pray devices. This will work most of the time. Known problems will be: wrong IDE drivers, USB support files (NTKERN not found), and possible hardware conflicts requiring resetting the BIOS. My preferred method is a Ghost image of what I want on all machines (drivers, cabs, Netware client, etc.) and an unattended batch install of Windows 9x or NT. THEN USE ZEN. To distribute the apps. It works, plain and simple. You can image the machine with an autoexec that starts your Windows install. ( IF NOTEXIST C:\windows\win.com c:\win95\setup ...) Place the machine and turn it on. Let it run for a little while, reboot, finish installing. On the first login the machine will build itself IF ZEN was set up well. Now, if you get REAL creative, your Ghost image can contain a second partition with the same information in a compressed image. Now you can redo the machine without your master CD or without flooding your network with unneccessary multicast packets. Brian Kronberg -- new to slashdot, old to desktop setup.
ZEN is notoriously flaky, too.
I have used ZEN extensively (for many clients on varied sites), and not seen any flakyness in the core functionality, that is, the Application Launcher.
Some of the other components have been problematic at times (don't get me started on the problems with the remote control software) But never Appication launching. Policy distribution, and workstation management bits have been good too.
You could just wait for NDS for Linux to come out - it *is* in development, and as they have done the work for a Solaris version, shouldn't take too long now...
You could use one of the other machine imaging packages which has App distribution on top. Imagecast (which I can't recommend, BTW) and RapidDeploy spring to mind. These mostly require windows server boxes to do their work though.
You could use Microsoft's own sysdiff utility for distributing the apps contents to the workstation, and just use a profile provided common desktop to create the icons.
Ultimately, I don't think anything comes near ZEN for all round ease of use and flexabilty to mass administer 95 and NTWS. It is Novell's crown jewels at the moment, and really is the thing that keeps sites using it from going to other systems. This is not all bad, as it at least stops managers from taking the organisation to NT! In Linux's quest to become a complete OS we need a desktop mass-administrator - for Linux desktops as well as Windows. How about an RPM installer on Windows. repackage Windows apps in RPMs, then have a launcher to check for the packages installation before starting the app.....
http://www.pyzzo.com/pcrdist
So that's my experience with flaky ZEN. If you don't have any problems, then it's probably as sweet a package manager as the writing on the box makes it out to be. :)
PC-Rdist can manage the filesystems of 95/98/NT, as well as the registries. The way it works, you store an image on the server, that contains the filesystem and registry exactly how you want it, and then you have the workstations synchronize to that image. Since it's just file-sharing based, linux+smb will do the job.
Pyzzo software makes PC-Rdist.
That is such a sad story. I have had better luck. Well they still forgot to enable DMA and a few other niggling things but nothing so bad as your shop. At the tech school where I administer we have a Ghost image for each computer lab. When Windows decided to crap out I just walk in with the boot disk and walk out 5 min later, come back to change the workstation name so that it shows up correctly in ZEN and that's it. It sure beats trying to figure out why a particular install went bad, takes about 30 min on the buildings network.
But yes, if an idiot creates the initial install images, then every computer in your org will be screwed up in the same way (this can actually help troubleshooting, every system breaks the same, and can be fixed the same). Conversely if the initial image is good than every computer will be that much more stable. It also helps when you want to distribute software through a logon script, you can be sure that every computer has the same software installed in the same places.
These tools are much better than trying to create custom automated install scripts and response files. It is faster and requires less babysitting.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Try removing every device from Device Manager before you upload the disk image. Then when you install it every hardware device will be detected upon bootup. Not a perfect solution, relies on Windows hardware detection, but it could be workable. Course of you aren't using PnP NICs and things this could be more difficult. I suppose that a master batch file, that only runs upon first boot and removes itself, could run anything needed to be customized on a per workstation basis.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
I've never used Z.E.N. but for remotely installing software, how about a special samba share with the install files and a batch file? The workstations could run a program that keeps track of how long the screensaver has been up, and if its been idle more than x amount of time, it checks for new .bat files on the share, and runs them.
.rpm of the program, and put that on the server for distribution.
You could make this program as simple or as sophisticated as you please. I would look into programs that keep track of registry changes and installed files. Then you could install the software on a test machine, and prepare something analagous to a
Of course, you'd have to make damn sure that the maching serving this special directory isn't compromised, but you should be doing that anyway.
This was all kind of a spur of the moment type idea, but it seems workable. comments?
Not all companies have the exact same hardware, where this "imaging" idea works best. I can see using Ghost, ImageCast, or similar programs where every machine has the exact same hardware/settings. But comon, lets get practical. How many places do you know has this kind of setup?
The average medium to large sized business probably has a great variety of hardware configurations. Who wants to have store a 1-3Gb Image file for each different set of computer hardware configurations? The other thing is, most of these packages are more of a one-time, deal. Image them once and they run forever? Not likely, especially with Windows. I want something that runs every day and corrects the problems that occur on a daily basis. Especially when students and/or new users are using the computer. Things can really get messed up when the above people get there hands on a computer.
Where I work, we have about 10 different kinds of hardware configurations with 30 computers. We're a medium sized computer training business, so we have people who know next to nothing using these computers on a daily basis. 30-50 people use these computers EVERY day, and when they don't know what there doing for the most part, things can get really screwed up. But in a learning enviroment, locking people from certain areas of the system doesn't cut it. People don't learn when you lock them out. So we need to find a better approach.
Is there any software packages that support something similar to "imaging" only have a feature for computers with vastly different hardware? Like, to be honest it is really only a few registry key's that need changing to overcome this obsticle. (I know, because I've created software a few years back that did it. But unfortunately it doesn't work with FAT32, and I don't have the time to re-code it.)
It would be great to find a piece of software that takes care of this problem. Im sure its out there somewhere?
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
I've seen this done as a proof of concept using just samba. It's kind of a pain to set it up but it does seem to be feasible.
1. Install your standard client OS (Windows 95 or 98) and then use your favorite tool to collect a complete directory/file tree of this clean install. Make a backup of the registry.
2. Install your favorite app. over this clean install and again collect a complete directory/file tree of this clean install.
3. Diff the two trees. That's what was actually just install - well, almost. You also need to note changes to the registry.
4. Copy all the files that were installed off to a Linux box.
5. Share c:\ with a password on some other Windows box then smbmount that drive and push the files onto it.
I believe that you also have to push a small batch file onto their desktop that will merge in the new registry elements and reboot their computer.
It works pretty nicely but it does require minimal user interaction - that is, they need to run the batch file at the end of the install. I seem to recall that I saw this demo'd where the batch file actually ran automatically and all the user actually had to do was click a button to reboot their computer.
To make this work you'ld have to maintain tight control over each computer, however. It must have a specific group/name and a specific password to share c:\ with read/write permissions. The proof of concept that I saw with this was demo'd with a database that contained group/name/password, MAC address, (IP address if you want to use statically assigned IP's), and user contact information. The system also housed a seperate database that contained license information for each application.
The user only need to visit a URL, select the update/app. that they wanted installed and give a password. If their authenticity and right to a license was verified from the database their windows box was smbmounted and the software installed.
The install was noted in the database so duplicate installs couldn't be made automatically and to keep licensing information current.
The added benefit was that you could also use DHCP to administrate the IP's. That also allowed them (a university) to hand out IP's only to known clients. Others got none routed IP's that could only be used to reach a campus registration server where they could request full access.
I've used systems like this in the past, but not Zenworks. The problem with every product is that they need a lot of knowledge to configure them correctly in the first place. Misadministration will cause much unwanted network activity, performance costs, and generally prevent people from doing their work.
I can give an example. The site where I am currently reluctantly employed uses Ghost to configure all their Win95 PCs, which was a management decision. I do not know who was responsible for the initial PC build, but it has a number of terrible faults. Basically, whoever did it was clueless regarding PC installations - the default IDE driver is used, without DMA, as opposed to the correct driver from the PC manufacturer. Consequentially, all PCs are running at around 20% efficiency when accessing the hard disk. In addition, many applications are incorrectly configured. The company has then decided to use a software deployment and asset management package to manage all these workstations. This was installed on the Ghost image, but again not configured correctly. We now have an asset management database with 100s of unknown PCs, not one of them can be traced. Management themselves are blaming my department, yet we did not roll out the software.
The other major problem with these machines is that they are dual login (WinNT, Novell 3). Every PC has the name service provider in the incorrect order, meaning it can take up to 5 minutes to log into the morning.
I do not like these so called administration saving products. Every time I hace seem them installed, an idiot has been responsible, and the whole site has badly configured machines.
Then again, the industry nowadays is full of ignorant morons who do not deserve their pay-cheques.
You could put NDS for Linux on all your Linux servers, and run an NDS tree without a single NetWare server, and probably install at least the application management portion of ZEN to NDS and use it just fine, but the client side depends on an NDS login, which usually wants a Novell server to map drives to, and to run the ZEN client utilites from. NDS for Linux has no NCP file sharing capability built in (it's not a replacement for either mars-nwe or ncpfs, it's just tools to run the NDS replicas on a Linux box, and provide nsswitch an PAM to the OS so authentication can be against NDS.)
With some playing, you could probably get the ZEN client files on a Samba share, or even a mars-nwe thing, or, if it was more modern, the Caldera NetWare for Linux product, but the latter is almost certainly not compatible with NDS for Linux (the DS versions are way off.) Ooh, ooh, Samba should be able to use NDS for Linux's PAM auth just fine, so you'd have a single password solution for drive mounting...
You're going to have to do a lot of work no matter what. I'm really fascinated though by the idea, and may throw some resources at it in my spare time.
--Mike
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
I can't think of any software that will provide application packages for ZEN aside from Novell's own servers.
I may be underestimating your school district, but I am surprised they would be using ZEN at all. As it stands right now, using ZEN for package deployment requires a massive initial commitment with experienced techs, to build those packages. Many apps have strange interdependencies that make it difficult to employ ZEN at an application-by-application level. (The Unholy Trinity comes to mind: IE, Outlook and Office.)
If you can justify that kind of initial commitment, you must realize that many application providers will not support apps installed via ZEN, since they have no way of testing your layout in-house. Again, Microsoft comes to mind, as does Adobe.
If you are using this simply to speed the building and development of workstations which don't vary greatly from user to user, I would suggest using Symantec's Ghost to build each one from a set of four or five images, one for each hardware base and user class, accompanied by careful setup to ensure the users maintain their data on a networked drives. Most application providers will support this arrangement.
This will still require an initial commitment to designing /good/ initial images, and, when you have to patch one of the built machines, you'll either have to do it by hand, or by slipping it into their login scripts.
Btw, LanManager, which is now free from microsoft, can be used to build a wonderful bootdisk which maps a drive to a shared directory containing Ghost and various build images. Sure beats running around with a stack of images on CDROM. It works even better when accompanied by a Xircom Pocket Etherlink Adapter, which converts a parallel port into a network interface. No NIC? No problem!
Weapons of Mass Analysis
ZEN works has it's strong points and it's weaknesses. The great thing is that it extends the NDS with some handy policy and workstation administration tools. Using snapshots allows you to install software like the way you want to install it but it can cause a severe strain on your network performance if you use it the wrong way.
What's wrong with ZEN? Haven't encountered any problems yet, but I want to be prepared...