lpitt's blog

Well, it's a while since I've been in here. Things have been manically busy and even with best efforts I've only managed to read things recently - I would have posted but got totally carried away reading Martin Buckley's 'History of ZENworks'. That totally appealed to the geek inside :)

So, what's happening in my world? ZAM mostly to be quite honest. We're doing so much ZAM work at the moment (ZENworks Asset Management in case you didn't know) for customers that I'm flat-out. It's a cool product - REALLY does what it says on the spec sheet.

Have I learnt anything new? Well, errr... yes. Some people are going to say d'oh to this one but I want to impart anyway. My lesson learned is :

If you're installing to an Oracle back-end make sure that you use the same ODBC drivers as the version of Oracle!

Might sound simple, but I spent a whole day working on the assumption that I did have the correct drivers before I found out that an Oracle 8 ODBC client doesn't talk properly to a 10g database :(

I just hope I can save one person from this pain with my story...

It's weeks to go, we're off on 21st September, and the car is fully painted up and ready. The image below is the bonnet (or hood, depending where you are). My wife kindly painted the ZENworks logo for us since Novell are a corporate sponsor. Click on this to see the 'beast' in all it's glory - then you can see what we're putting ourselves through!

Recently during a project I came across an issue distributing files with ZSM using OES Linux as the Distributor/Subscriber:

If you want to use ZSM between NSS volumes on OES Linux for distrbuting files - it didn't work!

On looking into this we found that - at the time - there was a TID stating that we did not support this.

The following URL is a link to the Novell Documentation website with a workaround for this situation. I'm posting it because since this was worked out (thanks to Martin Irwin!) I've been asked around half-a-dozen times how to do this.

So, if you want to have OES configured with NSS volumes on Linux and distribute files with ZENworks Server Management then the answer can be found here:

http://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/index.html?page=/documentation/zenworks7/sm7admin/data/b5mmr6l.html

And it's REALLY simple to implement - honest! :)

This is my first totally off-topic post. Nothing to do with ZENworks whatsoever! Bit cheeky to a corporate blog - but it's for charidy m8 ;) (The UK readers will get that one)

A friend and I have entered the Staples2Naples 2006 Banger Rally in September this year. This is a four day rally covering 1400 miles through France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria between September 22nd and 26th this year. There are only two rules:

1. The car must be worth less than £100: Ours is a 1991 Volvo 440 Special Edition (means it has a plastic spoiler). Originally red, now pink with 103k miles clocked.
2. It's not a race. It's a rally with challenges - arriving first does not mean you win.

Since the sun has reduced the paintwork on our car to an attractive pink we decided it would be cool to only 50% renovate it - one side like new and the other still pink to show the effects of the sun. Our chosen charity for the event is the Myfanwy Townsend Melanoma Fund and donations are made in memory of a colleage (Stuart Mansell - IDM Guru) who died from last December.

Some details if you're interested.

• http://www.staples2naples.com
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/55885563@N00/201659530/ - The car today :o)
• http://www.crudworks.org - this is our online 'Blog' for the event. We plan to update this daily using a laptop and GPRS during the event.
• http://www.justgiving.com/staples2naples06 - this is where you can make that all important donation.

Thanks everyone!

I promise to get back to ZENworks posts now :)

Well, that was a post that generated some interest.

It seems that most people have favourite documents that they use all the time; for help, reference or just to be able to stay informed.

I've had a bunch of offline e-mails about this one and got a pretty good list of ZENworks related TID's going now. So my plan is to keep them all secret and use the knowledge to improve my own engagements...

Ok, so I can't really do that. What I am really going to do is let this run for another week and then compile a list for this Blog.

Who knows, maybe if I get enough we could lobby the Novell Support website to start publishing the 'top tens' and help you guys out?

**Written in Provo. Very hot today, so hiding indoors**

Do you have a favourite (and yes, I have spelt that correctly!)?

Is there one TID, or a number of them, that you always refer to before an engagement?

Here are a couple of mine:

ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Updates - this is the TID of TIDs for any recent updates to ZDM7.

Enable ZENworks logging - this is invaluable for troubleshooting. It details all the logging options available to ZENworks Server and Desktop Management.

Let me know your favourites - I'll add them to my list.