PC-Duo Enterprise Console v2.02 =============================== Release Notes ------------- SB 19-Jun-03 Copyright (c) 2003, Vector Networks Limited. All Rights Reserved Contents ======== 1 Introduction 2 New Features in This Release 3 Compatibility with Existing LANutil32 Installations 4 Installation Instructions 5 Problems Corrected 6 Known Problems, Restrictions and Notes 7 Request for Feedback 8 Vector Networks Web Site 1 Introduction =============== This document accompanies PC-Duo Enterprise v2.02. It contains notes on platform support, known problems, etc, and should be read in conjunction with the User Manual and Evaluation Guide that accompany this release. Users that are upgrading from a previous version of PC-Duo Enterprise or LANutil32 should refer to the Upgrade Guide. Please Note: Internet Explorer v5.0 and MDAC v2.61 are required as a minimum for this release. 2 New Features in This Release =============================== Version 2.02 adds the following new features and enhancements: o Online-Client Resource Management A new facility has been added to support resource management for Online Clients. Offline mode is generally recommended but the MMC Console is now able to provide builk management of Resource addition/modification across Online Clients. o SQLWizard Integration SQLWizard is used when creating/administering Client Groups, database Views, and also Assets. The SQL query is now saved directly into the calling dialog when the SQLWizard window is closed. Version 2.01 added the following new features and enhancements: Oracle Support -------------- Oracle 8 and Oracle 9i are supported. Note: You must also install the optional "Oracle Provider for OLE-DB" for the relevant version of Oracle. Oracle 8, v8.1.6 and v8.1.7, are supported without needing any subsequent updates. Similarly for Oracle 9, the standard v9.2 and later versions are supported. Oracle v8.1.7 is not supported on Windows NT4 for the Job Scheduler Service. Windows 2K/XP do not suffer problems in this area. There is a known problem with numeric values in reports often appending ".00" to the correct value (e.g. 512.00 MB of memory). This problem is being researched with Seagate. NetWare Support --------------- It is now possible to add an Offline Path that is based upon a drive letter (instead of the previous restriction to UNC network paths only). This is intended for NetWare users, particularly, where network-wide mapped drives are commonly used. There are also enhancements relating to Offline Area management - please refer to section 5 for details. Hardware Inventory Support -------------------------- This release adds support for detecting the speed of a LAN card (e.g. 10Mb/s or 100Mb/s) Support has also been added for various new CPUs/speeds. New Features in the v2.0 Release ================================ New Console ----------- A new Console has been implemented, based upon Microsoft's MMC. This provides much-improved usability with a new HTML-based tree structure for Operations and data. This also integrates with the PC-Duo Enterprise Diagnostics and HelpDesk modules, which share MMC-based interfaces. Hardware Inventory Improvements ------------------------------- This release adds support for capture of accurate device information on the following device types: PCI SCSI ISA IDE PCMCIA USB FireWire (IEEE 1394) Infra-Red There have been improvements to the capture of DMI information. This allows identification of the PC manufacturer, model and serial number in more situations, particularly for newer IBM and Toshiba systems. The PC Make and Model report has been added to capitalize on improved manufacturer information. This report shows PCs sorted by their manufacturer & model. The Hardware Inventory HWMAIN table now includes new fields for storing the PC manufacturer, PC model and system serial number. These fields are much easier to use and therefore supersede the entries that were previously stored under Node Properties. HWMAIN also now includes fields for storing information on a second modem. There are many new tokens added to the Hardware Inventory formatted output, adding support for PC manufacturer, model and serial number, for example. Many new Groups have been added to the standard set. These include Groups identifying PCs by various common manufacturers (IBM, Toshiba, etc); PCs with specific device types (e.g. SCSI, PCI, PCMCIA); and various others identifying PCs with various amounts of memory and disk space It is also now possible to 'lock' Client Property values so that they are not subsequently overwritten by Hardware Inventory scans. This means that a Client PC user can provide an incorrect answer to a User-Prompted question (e.g. asking for their department name) and the Console user can now override the incorrect information and have it continue to appear in reports and views even when further Hardware Inventory scans are performed. These Client Properties can be locked and unlocked on an individual Client, individual Property, basis. There are also many improvements in the area of hard disk and mapped device identification (including DFS drives), modem recognition, COM ports etc. The User Prompt Editor now allows you to specify Introduction text and a conflict with the previous implementation of Title text has been corrected. Software Inventory Improvements ------------------------------- Wildcards can now be used in subdirectory names in Software Inventory rules. The Software Inventory recognition 'Rules' import process now preserves user-entered license counts during a merge. This has allowed the following reports to be added: o Software Package Licenses (Shows software packages that have had a 'purchased license' count entered through the Packages Database Editor. The number of installed copies is shown together with the remaining count of licenses (highlighted if zero or negative!) o Software Vendor Licenses (as for the report above, but grouped by software package vendor rather than by package name) The Software Prompt for Package report now builds the package names pick list dynamically from a database query. This means that packages that are not present in the shipped packages database can still be offered in this pick-list. Note that the database search is done against the Software Inventory _results_ table so the pick-list only contains packages that have actually been found on the network (rather than containing potentially hundreds of irrelevant package names from the Rules database). There are many updates to the Software Inventory Packages Database. Miscellaneous Improvements -------------------------- The database interface has been updated to use Microsoft ADO, thus improving compatibility with newer database engines. The Client Configuration Operation has been reimplemented. It is now Customized through a tabbed dialog and it now supports much greater control of current Client functionality. Client support for changed Offline Area paths has been improved such that changes to path credentials, for instance, no longer cause allocation of a new Offline Id. Client Deployment now defaults the PD filename and also the Kit Path. The Kit Path is defaulted to the first Offline Area defined for the Site (if any). Client deployment is now easier as a result. There is a new $SITEOFFLINE$ token for Command Launch Operations - this is replaced with the path to the first Offline Area defined for the Site (if any). The online help has been converted to HTMLhelp. The following new Operations have been added: o Upgrade Database Settings This is a single-click database upgrade process for databases created with previous versions of Enterprise or LANutil32. It imports & blends the latest Software Inventory, Software Distribution, Group & Operation definitions. o Trigger Client Data Refresh This requests that the Client captures and uploads fresh inventory data to the Offline Area, regardless of the normal interval between captures. o Stop Software Metering Data Capture This disables Client capture of Software Metering data (*.SWM files). This can be useful for customers that do not wish to use the Software Metering module. o Restart Metering Data Capture This re-enables Client capture of Metering data after it has been stopped with the Operation described above. Various data files are now placed in the new "PC-Duo Enterprise Data" root-level directory tree (e.g. the Offline Area parent directory, Access databases and log files). For example, log files from the Scheduler and from Scheduled Jobs are now written to a directory in the new data directory tree that is usually located at: C:\PC-Duo Enterprise Data\Logs (This assumes that C: was the installation drive for Enterprise.) The C:\PC-Duo Enterprise Data\ directory tree is the new default location for the Offline Area and Microsoft Access database files in evaluations. Further improvements in the Client software are summarized in the README file accompanying the Client kit. 3 Compatibility with Previous Versions ======================================= This version of PC-Duo Enterprise is compatible with previous PC-Duo Enterprise v1.2 and LANutil32 v5.x Host and Client installations. Please refer to the Upgrade Guide for details. Importing Operations during a Site upgrade from a previous Enterprise or LANutil32 installation replaces Operations where appropriate. Note that many of the standard Operations have been renamed (and now use more descriptive names that are possible with the MMC Console). User-customized Operations will be retained with their old names. Beware that new Customization data for v2 Enterprise Operations is likely to cause a v1.2 Enterprise Console to crash if it attempts to open a database that has been created with the new version. The new software is compatible with old databases but new databases are not compatible with old software. Similarly, beware that new Clients generate data that is not supported by old Consoles. You should generally have all Consoles at least as new as the newest version of the Clients. 4 Installation Instructions ============================ You should install the PC-Duo Enterprise Console and Client kits as described in the Evaluators Guide. Similarly, PC-Duo Enterprise Diagnostics and HelpDesk kits should be installed in accordance with the associated documentation. 5 Problems Corrected ===================== Version 2.02 provides the following improvements and problem corrections: o Upgrading a LANutil32 Client to Enterprise did not result in the old LANutil32 Client being uninstalled, causing potential customer confusion. Fixed. o Hardware Inventory failed to detect all network-attached printers. Fixed. o Hardware Inventory sometimes failed to detect the subnet mask correctly on Clients with multiple IP addresses on Windows XP. Fixed. o Windows 2003 (.NET) Server is now supported for the Client. o The Client User-Prompting application would sometimes make incorrect adjustments for the prompt list. Fixed. o A revised User Prompt list is now loaded from the Offline Area even if User Prompting is disabled on the Client. This allows Clients to be more responsive to Prompt list changes if/when Prompting is subsequently enabled. o MMC Console Columns which contain dates did not sort correctly. Fixed. o The "Defining a new Asset Type" dialog did not support HTMLhelp. Fixed. o Modifying a group and clicking cancel would still refresh the Console's Clients folder. Fixed. o The database CREATEDATE field in the HWUPDATE table was not updated correctly during a Hardware Inventory Publish. This compromised the "Not Pushed Recently" Group. Fixed. o The Copy Site drop down list in the New Site wizard was not populated even though other Sites were defined. Fixed. o When upgrading or opening a Site, an "Unable to open database" error message was displayed if you do not have a large enough license capacity. Fixed. o Directory names containing "}" could sometimes cause a SQL parsing failure in Software Inventory. Fixed. o An HRCHECK error message was displayed when by the database "Logon Information" dialog when the OK button was pressed with the drop-down list left empty. Fixed. Version 2.01 provided the following improvements and problem corrections: Database and Site Creation -------------------------- There have been several database performance and reliability improvements The New Site Wizard now has improved error handling for various errors during Site creation SQL Server Site databases accessed with credentials including comma (",") are now supported in the MMC Console. Similarly, Windows NT security is now supported for SQL Server Site databases Intermittent Offline Area and Site creation errors, including on non-English versions of Windows, have been fixed Jobs and Schedulers ------------------- The Software Metering Collator and Summarizer, and the Software Distribution Job monitor all now provide improved progress information in the database and respond to Job Abort requests from the Console The Console now limits state transitions correctly for Jobs The Console's Modify Clients support for scheduled Jobs now displays the Clients that a Job was previously targeting and saves the new selection correctly Jobs that are manually Aborted through the Console now go to Holding state to allow user intervention The Scheduler service now writes its log file to the location configured (previously it was always written to the default location) Offline Path Support -------------------- There have been numerous improvements relating to Offline Path handling and the credentials used from the Console and from the Clients. This release introduces support for distinct credentials to be used by the Console and by the Client for each Offline Area. The Console can reasonably use a privileged account to access the Offline Area but it is not recommended to allow Clients to use a privileged account for their connections to the Offline Area. The LUCLIENT account is provided for Client-side access but this can be overridden as an Offline Area is created and a Client kit configured. This release now remembers the Client credentials that were assigned in any Client kit for each Offline Area and these stored credentials are now used by default in various subsequent settings dialogs. For example, the Configure Clients Operation allows you to assign Clients to a new Offline Area and it now automatically uses the Client-side credentials, where defined, and the Host-side credentials otherwise. In order to maintain the integrity or these Client-side credentials, the $OfflineArea Client Property is now read-only in the Properties dialog (if you need to change a Client to reference a different Offline Area, you should add the new Offline Area to the Site and then run an Find Clients Operation to publish the new settings reliably). All of these changes make Offline Area management much easier and far less error-prone. Some combinations of shares and subdirectories for Offline Area paths did not work correctly. These have been fixed Software and Hardware Inventory ------------------------------- Cancelling an interactive Inventory scan now works correctly Software Inventory Jobs submitted by the Offline Scanner now inherit the Excluded Directories default setting correctly Importing a Software Inventory Packages Database has various reliability fixes and the shortcut key handling within the Packages Database Editor ("RuleMaker") has been restored Hardware Inventory analysis of v2.0 Audit Client data and of LANutil32 v5 Client data now shows correct CPU information The Bus Type PCMCIA Group definition now correctly selects Client PCs with PCMCIA cards The Stored Hardware Inventory results display now prints correctly Customization of Hardware Inventory scan Operations has been streamlined The Client Windows Hardware Inventory checker now runs correctly on Windows 95 (the test for USB devices was causing problems because USB support is incomplete in several Windows 95 releases). USB device recognition is now disabled in Windows 95 for this reason. The Client Windows Hardware Inventory checker now supports detailed control of the advanced interrogation tests. These tests are controlled with settings in the LUCLIENT.INI and are documented in the LUCLIENT.TXT file in the Client kit Client Installation ------------------- The v2.0 Client installation failed to correct the DataDirectory= option in the LUCLIENT.INI when an upgrade was being performed from LANutil to Enterprise and this caused subsequent problems with the previous directory continuing to be used by the v2.0 Client. This has been fixed such that the correct directory is now used by the new Client The Client installer now avoids displaying DOS boxes as various drivers and services are installed and started. This improves the silent install support Miscellaneous ------------- There have been numerous corrections to the Configure Clients Operation Customize support. Settings are now saved and retained correctly Submitting a Software Distribution as a scheduled Job now prompts correctly for the package details The Software Distribution Job Viewer now provides a synchronous database and view refresh as a single function Foreign characters are now supported in Operation names Problems have been fixed when working with large fonts and there have been other miscellaneous cosmetic improvements There have been usability improvements concerning various results view windows The Offline Scanner settings dialog now traps invalid configurations correctly The Software Metering Collator now runs much faster than before (approximately 15 times faster!). The user's DomainName field is now populated correctly in the Software Metering SWMDETAIL database and purging of the .SWM Metering data files has been corrected File drag and drop in the Browser has been fixed SQLWizard sometimes fails on Windows XP. We are working on a fix LANdeploy now handles domain names containing "." etc. There have been various corrections and improvements to the report designs Problems Corrected in v2.0 ========================== Hardware Inventory ------------------ This release corrects problems with username capture in previous releases. The correct logged-on username is now collected. Please note that we no longer rely on this being captured through the User Prompting facility, and the new "LutInfo.Ref" question file does not include this as a hidden question any more. This is because it is more reliable when the logged-on username is captured by the main Hardware Inventory capture process rather than when the user is prompted (which invariably open happens quite rarely). The Hardware Inventory Operation database purge support failed to purge all eligible data. This has been corrected. Nodename change detection in the Hardware Inventory module did not work for DOS-only Clients. This has been corrected. Hardware Inventory data capture could fail to pick up very long environment variable definitions such as can occur occasionally with PATH settings. This has been corrected. Hardware Inventory support has been added for identifying memory greater than 2GB. Disk geometry information was not always accurate and is no longer displayed in the Hardware Inventory tabbed dialog. Software Inventory ------------------ Publishing results from an interactive Software Inventory scan failed to publish the Unrecognized Application directories list, if that phase was enabled for the scan. This has been corrected. Importing Software Inventory Rules could trigger erroneous warnings of differences when the Rules were the same and would overwrite any customer setting of the "Maximum Licenses" field. All of these problems have been fixed. Long (but valid) filenames and directory names in Software Inventory rules could cause the Console to crash. This has been corrected. Various errors have been corrected related to editing Software Inventory Rules (e.g. OPTION rules and SubDirectory rules are now handled more consistently in the editor) There have been several improvements to the Offline Client directory snapshot handling (DIR_x.DAT files). Corrupted files could often cause the Console to crash and the Client failed to delete files that were not fully saved due to lack of disk space on the Offline Area server. This area has been improved significantly but note that we have seen some snapshot files that have exactly 2KB of binary garbage data before the start of the genuine snapshot data. We are researching the cause for this. Software Metering ----------------- The Software Metering Collator was very slow in operation and it could sometimes add data repeatedly on successive runs. There have been numerous improvements in this area and it now runs typically 5 times faster than before and avoids adding unnecessary data to the database. The Software Metering Collator now converts executable filenames into an application name in more situations, including when the Software Inventory recognition rules use SubDirectory rules. The Software Metering Client now converts short filename paths into their long filename equivalents, where possible, and this further improves the conversion of filenames to package names. Hosts running Software Metering Jobs against all Offline Areas now adjust automatically as new Offline Areas are added, and old Offline Areas removed, from the Site. A memory leak in the Collator has also been fixed. This and further changes in the algorithm and interaction with the Job Scheduler have contributed to much-improved reliability for the Collator. Scheduled Jobs and the Offline Scanner -------------------------------------- There are many improvements in the area of Scheduled Jobs, the Scheduler Service and WinScheduler. Intense database update activity could sometimes trigger a lock error that could cause the Scheduler to stop processing Jobs. This has been corrected; database errors are now retried correctly. The Job Scheduler Service and WinScheduler application could both interact with InstallShield installers on Windows NT4 (only), causing the installer to stall. This has been corrected. The Job Schedulers now execute Jobs in the order in which they are Scheduled to run (this was only significant in the situation when there are more Jobs due to run than Job slots available) The Configure Scheduler Operation now opens the WinScheduler Properties dialog if the Scheduler Service was previously running (rather than WinScheduler immediately minimizing into the tray) The Offline Scanner now excludes the default directory list from Software Inventory Jobs that it submits. This corrects the previous reports of installed and then removed packages from these directories. A problem with the Offline Scanner not detecting new Clients in the Offline Areas has been fixed - it now runs correctly under the Scheduler The Offline Scanner now defaults correctly to the local Host name and Job Logs are correctly generated in the database. Reports ------- The "Comprehensive Node Report" and "Hardware Asset Manager" reports both suffered errors on Oracle databases. These have been corrected, but note the known problem relating to all reports on Oracle. It is now possible to print from a Crystal Report to a printer that is not the default printer. Some of the reports were showing incomplete information due to rounding errors between the Microsoft Access database driver and Crystal Reports. These have been corrected. Obsolete Operations ------------------- License Group Analyzer and Editor Operations, and UltraBac Backup Operations are no longer supported and will not be displayed from an old database that contains them. Any UltraBac Backup scheduled Jobs will be automatically deleted from the Jobs database when they become due to run. Miscellaneous ------------- Client deployment is now more resilient when multiple deployment Jobs are sent to each Client, including when Jobs are sent while the Client Agent is still active processing a previous Job. Note that it is not necessary to reboot Clients between deployment attempts. LANdeploy saved scripts can now be reloaded correctly. Passwords containing "/" characters could previously trigger a checksum error during software distributions and cause authentication failures elsewhere. This has been fixed. There have been some improvements to the error reporting in the Offline Autopopulate Operation so Offline Areas that are not accessible are now reported as such rather than being ignored silently. There was a problem with Software Distribution/LANdeploy and Windows XP Clients. This related to the Client not having access to the files required to perform the Distribution Job (usually reporting an error 3 in the ClDist32.txt debug file). This has been corrected. The Client Configuration Operation previously forced you to enter an Offline Path even if you just want to change the Push Interval, and this triggers the Client to assign a new Offline Id. This has been fixed in the reimplemented Configure Clients Operation. This release corrects several problems concerning time zone and daylight savings handling. 6 Known Problems, Restrictions and Notes ========================================= Windows 2000 Servers with Active Directory ------------------------------------------ Using the New Site Wizard to create an Offline Area share and Client account on a Windows 2000 server that has Active Directory enabled is likely to fail, sometimes hanging the Console. If you are using Active Directory, we recommend that you create Offline Area shares and Client accounts manually. Other Issues ------------ For Microsoft SQL Server, if the SQL Server client code page setting is different to the SQL Server server code page, you may get loss of textual data in the database. Please ensure that the system(s) where you run the Enterprise Console(s) and Scheduler(s) have a SQL Server database client configuration that matches that on the SQL Server server system. If you open a Site in the Console (by expanding it from the tree), then delete it, and then try to create a fresh Site with the same name as the one just deleted, you are likely to get an error. If you wish to replace a Site with a new Site with the same name, you should close the Console after deleting the old Site and reopen it before creating the new Site. Deleting network Sites may fail if the Scheduler or another Console are currently running against that Site, reporting errors about DSNs. You have to use REGEDIT to delete the relevant key below the main Console registry key to recover. Please ensure that no other applications are using a Site if you want to delete it. The New Site Wizard will only establish the Global Site when it creates a fresh (new format) Site. The Global Site is not established when installing on top of a previous version and immediately linking to a previously-created Site (and the Console fails if the Global Site dialog is opened in this situation). It is no longer possible to drag and drop Clients from other Groups into a Fixed Group to populate it. Beware that we have seen occasional 'dangling connections' from the Client (where network connections to the Offline Area have remained after Client processing is finished and further connections are made over subsequent hours/days). The saved selection of Clients in the Client Selection Dialog does not expand when a group is selected in the Groups tab. We have seen an intermittent error from the Console's Client Selection Dialog when running on Windows XP with themes enabled. The Client Selection Dialog saves its list of selected Clients and Groups between different calls. However, this can cause problems when multiple sites are being used Modifying a Dynamic Group's SQL does not immediately update the display for that Group. Click away from the Group node in the tree, and re-select it to force an update There is a known problem with Software Distribution/LANdeploy and Windows XP Clients. This involves a Windows XP requirement that LANdeploy must be run in a domain environment (otherwise Windows XP refuses connection to the ADMIN$ share), although this can be avoided by disabling the ForceGuest Windows XP local security policy. Please refer to the separate README.TXT files for extra information on Client and Audit software issues. 7 Request for Feedback ======================= We are very interested to hear your comments on the appearance and usability of this software, and your suggestions on relative priorities for new features. Please send your comments to: Vector Networks Ltd., 4 Mercury Park, Amber Close, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B77 4RP U.K. Tel: +44 (0)1827 67333 Fax: +44 (0)1827 67068 support@vector-networks.com support@vector-networks.co.uk sales@vector-networks.com sales@vector-networks.co.uk 8 Vector Networks Web Site =========================== Visit our World Wide Web site for new product, software update, and release information. Point your Web browser at the following URL: http://www.vector-networks.com