Zen Managed WS imports into every Zen4 or Zen65 tree
"@netaccess.thistoo.ch >
that it happens to see. As we have many customers with either Zen4 or
Zen65 installed, any time when I visit them and connect my laptop to
their LAN, my workstation imports itself into the tree. The registry
keys for the Workstation manager should look like this:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell\Workstation Manager\Identification]
"Tree"="MY _OFFICE_TREE"
"NALUseSingleTree"=dword:00000001
"Preferred Connection"="192.168.x.y"
"Workstation Object"="CN=MyLaptop.OU=WSContext.O=MYOffice"
"Workstation ID"="abc1234....."
But when I visit customer A my workstation imports itself into their
tree and the reg keys look like this:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell\Workstation Manager\Identification]
"Tree"="CUSTOMER_A_TREE"
"NALUseSingleTree"=dword:00000001
"Preferred Connection"="192.168.y.x"
"Workstation Object"="MyLaptop.OU=WSContext.O=CUSTOMER_A"
"Workstation ID"="def4567......"
If I then go to Customer B the keys look like this:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell\Workstation Manager\Identification]
"Tree"="CUSTOMER_B_TREE"
"NALUseSingleTree"=dword:00000001
"Preferred Connection"="192.168.y.x"
"Workstation Object"="MyLaptop.OU=WSContext.O=CUSTOMER_B"
"Workstation ID"="aed1579......"
When I return to my office, the laptop reimports into my home tree
again. This wouldn't be a problem if there weren't the danger of NAL
packages being assigned to the default workstation import container and
my laptop receiving undesired installations....
Has anyone else seen this problem? I've talked to Novell support about
this and according to them this doesn't happen (yeah, I know, big
help...). I saw the problem when we were running Zfd4+ and it is still
there under Zfd65sp1b. My laptop is configured with the latest Zen6.5
agents, but still responds to Zen4+ import services. I've installed the
zen agent with the "use only one NAL tree" switch defined to my home
tree, but this doesn't solve the problem. My other workmates have also
noticed the same problem (so I'm not he only one who has this problem
that doesn't exist...). I realize that most workstations do not migrate
physically between LANs like we do, but I was of the opinion that if a
Workstation Manager is configured to listen to a single tree, it was
supposed to ignore ZEN stuff coming from another tree. The import
service seems to ignore this and grab hold of any WS that has compatible
zen agents installed.
Has anyone an idea how to keep my laptop faithfull to my home tree?.
thanks,
Bill
Shaun Pond
first guess is that you're running ZWSREG.EXE somewhere - that will
force a re-register. Are you logging in to the customer tree?
--
Shaun Pond
William M. Reading
Of course I'm logging into my customer's tree. In order to manage the
ZEN installation I need ConsoleOne and that requires a login.
Is ZWREG.EXE so designed that it imports you into any tree you login to?
My understanding was that once a workstation was imported and the
workstation manager was configured for a specific tree, then the
workstation only responded to ZEN requests or actions originating from
that tree. I assume that the following key remains fixed until I set an
agent configuration policy that changes it:
"Tree"="MY _OFFICE_TREE"
What I'm seeing is that whenever I login to another tree somewhere where
a Zen import policy is configured, the TREE value will change to the
current tree and the workstation will be imported. Is this functioning
as designed? My experience with Zen prior to v. 4 was that the Tree
value remained as it was until it was explicitely changed (manually or
with a policy).
I've discovered a workaround to prevent my machine from wandering. The
following registry entry will prevent the zwsreg.exe on the local
machine from finding any import server except the desired one:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Novell\ZENworks\zenwsreg]
"ImportServer"="<DNS name or IP address of import server>"
If ZWSREG is functioning as designed it would be interesting to know
what the logic was behind the change in functionality. If this isn't the
way it's supposed to work, then it would be helpful to know why, as I
seem at least to be consistant in making the same mistake in all of my
ZEN4/6.5 installations.
Any further information would be helpful.
Shaun Pond
I will make some enquiries, but I'd be interested, in the meantime, why
you're running zwsreg.exe instead of letting automatic import work?
--
Shaun Pond
William M. Reading
the client runs it automatically in the background when it boots. Some
sort of agent is trying to connect to "zenwsimport" to see if it needs
to be imported or not. I assume that it is zwsreg.exe which is being
started by the workstation manager. Whatever it is, if the workstation
starts up and finds a zen4+ import server it gets imported without any
user intervention. I can prevent this from happening if I enter the
registry key mentioned in my last posting. Nevertheless, I don't see why
a previously imported workstation registered with a specific tree would
allow itself to be imported into another tree, overwriting its previous
configuration. I guess the question is do I have a client side problem,
or a problem with the AWSI service that takes over any machine it sees.
I suspect the the client to be the problem, since it is the one that
ultimately makes the registry changes which determine the configuraiton
of which tree controls the client (on a zen level)
Shaun Pond
I've spoken to the engineer, and I'm afraid that this is working as
designed. To prevent it happening, you could populate your registry
with the name of the server you use for import in your home network...
--
Shaun Pond