PC-Duo Enterprise Console v3.00 =============================== Multilanguage ============= Release Notes ------------- SB 22-Nov-04 Copyright (c) 2004, 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 v3.00. 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: The following minimum versions of support software are required for this release: Internet Explorer v6.0, Jet v4.0 SP-3, MDAC v2.61 and MMC v1.2. Windows NT4 Console Support: This release is intended to be the last that supports the Console on Windows NT v4. Subsequent releases will require Windows 2000 as a minimum platform for the Console. Client support for Windows NT v4 is not affected and will continue. Windows 3.x and DOS Client Support: Beware that the Client no longer supports Windows 3.x (16-bit) or DOS systems. If you require support for legacy platforms you should install the v2.10 Client. The v2.10 Client is available as a separate download from the Vector Networks Web site. The new Console continues to be compatible with v2.10 (and previous) Client releases. Similarly, the Audit Client no longer supports Windows 3.x systems and the v2.10 Audit Client should be used for Auditing these machines. This kit is also available as a separate download from the Vector Networks Web site. 2 New Features in This Release =============================== Version 3.00 adds the following new features and enhancements: o Active Directory support The Hardware Inventory Operations now default to capturing Active Directory Organizational Unit membership information for each Client, with the Console displaying Clients in the Active Directory tree hierarchy, where appropriate. Active Directory OU membership can be used when selecting Clients for subsequent Operations via a new tab on the Client Selection dialog. o "One Shot" Client support It is now possible to trigger remote Audit-style data capture on Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 PCs. The Client software is deployed, captures data back to the Offline Area and deletes itself automatically, potentially without any Client PC user interaction (Silent mode) and potentially in real time. o Real-Time Software Distribution support Software Distributions to Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Clients can now be performed in real time, without waiting for the normal polling interval configured on each Client. o Enterprise Web Portal Support Web-based click-through reporting is implemented by the Portal, which is a separately installable kit that gives users click-through access to asset management reports from anywhere including historical system configurations, software utilization, license compliance, software deployments and migrations. The Enterprise Console supports integration with the Portal through an MMC snapin, creating a new node in the Enterprise tree. o Improved Hardware Inventory results display The Hardware Inventory tabbed dialog has been replaced with an HTML-style display that offers much easier navigation of the wealth of information available. o Hardware Inventory "Compare To" The new Hardware Inventory display supports a Client-to-Client comparison feature whereby differences in Clients can be highlighted to aid problem resolution. Client data can be compared between a live scan and previous data in the database, and between one Client and a different Client. This feature can aid significantly in identifying and resolving problems regarding Client configuration. o Offline Area Manager A new Offline Area Manager has been added to simplify administration of large Offline Areas, including support for managing the configuration of Client Kits in each Offline Area and reporting the disposition of Clients across multiple Offline Areas. This helps you to control disk utilization and to move Clients between Offline Areas easily. o Offline Area Groups Dynamic Groups are created automatically to select Clients in each Offline Area in a Site. This helps Operations to be targeted at Clients in terms of their Offline Area assignment, via a new tab on the Client Selection dialog. o Macintosh Client integration support Software Inventory and Hardware Inventory support for Macintosh Clients is now available. Macintosh Clients appear side-by-side with PC Clients and can be intermixed with Inventory and Browser Operations, for example. Software Inventory data is comprehensive, using a similar Rule-based recognition approach for Confirmed Applications and a VersionInfo-style fallback for Provisional recognitions. Full Wizard support is included to ease creation of further Rulesets beyond those provided as standard. Hardware Inventory data is basic but still valuable and displayed in the new Hardware Viewer; hard-copies can be printed with the normal reports. Macintosh Client-to-Client comparisons are supported by the Hardware Viewer, as for PC Clients. Macintosh Clients are not supported for Software Distribution, Metering, or Diagnostics modules. The Macintosh Client kit is initially provided as a Web download only. o Clients Tree Display Enhancements in the Console The Clients tree in the Console now segregates the "All Clients" Group from other Custom Groups (and from the new Active Directory and Offline Area displays). This improved tree structure makes it easier to view Client details. o Context-Sensitive Right-Click Enhancements in the Console The Console's tree display now supports several new right-click functions that were previously in the "Site Management" folder. This improves ease of use for many functions. o Software Identification Wizard Improvements The Software Identification Wizard now displays VersionInfo in the file selection page to make it easier to choose the bast file(s) for application recognition, and it has various other usability enhancements. o Database Schema Improvements Many improvements have been made to the Site database schema as part of a long term project to improve performance and functionality. Binary 'foreign key' relationships have been added, and are retro-fitted to old Site databases. Note: The text "NODENAME" field is deprecated in all tables except for the NODES table, and it will be removed in a future release. Any new reports etc should use the FKNODES link to obtain the text nodename from the NODES table, where required. An old format Site database must now be upgraded to the latest schema in order to open it (previously, the Console allowed a Site to be opened with old format data). In order to make Site upgrades easier, the schema upgrade prompts if the "Upgrade Database Settings" Operation should be executed and runs it automatically if allowed. o Audit Client Progress Dialog and Customization support The Audit Client (and One-Shot Client) can display a progress dialog to improve the feedback to the Audit operator. Text displayed by this dialog can be customized by the user to help with Audits that are performed by operators that are not familiar with Enterprise. The progress dialog can be concealed to make a completely silent data capture, where appropriate. o Software Distribution Token Support for the 'Program Files' Folder Software Distribution now supports the "$PROGFILES$" token in file paths for the Check Path, Pre- and Post-Process commands, and in the main application install command. This is expanded automatically on each Client to deduce the Client-specific location. It is no longer necessary to specify multiple Check Path entries to cater for Clients that use a mixture of C:, D:, etc, drives for their Program Files area. Localized equivalents for this folder name are supported automatically as well. o Export/Import of Fixed Groups is now supported, allowing Fixed Group definitions to be shared between Site databases. Version 2.30 was the first public release after v2.10. Version 2.30 added support for the following localized languages: o French o German o Spanish Note that these are 'software-only' translations at this time and the documentation and online help remain in English. The v2.30 release also added support for Patch Management, building upon Microsoft's Automatic Update ("SUS") infrastructure. Enterprise adds significant improvements to the reporting functionality and to AU Client settings management particularly outside of an Active Directory environment. Version 2.10 added the following new features and enhancements: o The Software Identification Manager and Software Identification Wizard These major Software Inventory improvements consolidate application recognition 'Rules' maintenance with the addition of file-level VersionInfo techniques. This provides a significant boost to the quality of results and the ease of management of Software assets. Directories are now far less likely to be reported as containing an unrecognized application and as a result, the search for such directories is now enabled by default (overriding previous Operation settings). The Software Identification Manager also now allows applications to be 'hidden' from results to allow unimportant detail to be inhibited. It is now possible to control the combination of Confirmed, Provisional, and Hidden applications that are included in Software Inventory-related reports. The Browser is now able to display Version Information and the addition of VersionInfo data capture to the Client has been matched with "Configure Clients" support to allow bulk/remote management of this new feature. o Natural Language Query support in Add/Modify Groups Group definitions now store any SQLWizard Natural Language data so that it is easy to edit Groups in their Natural Language form. o Asset Management Operation Hierarchy The "Asset Management" tree in the Console now includes expanding subsections that allow easier grouping of related Operations. 3 Compatibility with Previous Versions ======================================= This version of PC-Duo Enterprise is compatible with previous PC-Duo Enterprise v2.x/v1.2 and LANutil32 v5.x Host and Client installations. Please refer to the Upgrade Guide for details. Please refer to the note at the top of this document regarding support for Windows 3.x and DOS Clients. Importing Operations during a Site upgrade from a previous Enterprise or LANutil32 installation replaces Operations where appropriate. User-customized Operations will be retained with their old names. Old Site databases are compatible with this release but new databases and new Clients are not compatible with old releases. Note that upgrading a database for use with this version is likely to prevent old version Consoles from accessing it. You should take a backup copy of any database that you may wish to continue using with an old Console. Localization: Note that a database upgrade from a previous English version of Enterprise to a localized version of Enterprise will not result in old Operations etc being superseded across languages. 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 ===================== Please refer to the separate README file in the Client kit for details of important improvements to the Client's behaviour. Version 3.00 provides the following improvements and problem corrections: o The Hardware Inventory Operation now propagates Offline Area connection and data load errors correctly. o Package Policy analysis should not have been applied to Provisional application recognitions since they do not have entries in the Applications Library. This has been corrected; Policies are now only applied to 'known' applications. o Sites created with a long name (beyond 24 characters) now work correctly o Patch Management Activity History report now displays "Week-to-date" information correctly. o The Asset Manager failed to delete user-added columns from a SQL Server database. This has been corrected. o Assets data was not copied when upgrading a Site from Access to SQL Server. This has been corrected. o The Console now selects the correct Oracle 8 database driver when creating a Site on a machine that has Crystal Reports v9 installed. o Creating/Customizing an Operation now correctly prevents a clash with a pre-existing Operation of the same name. A default unique name is also generated when creating a new Operation. o Change History is now supported for System BIOS information. o The Debug Mode option is now saved correctly when Customizing the Client Configuration Operation. o Deleting a Resource from a Client's database entry or physically removing a drive from the Client PC did not result in related entries being purged from the Unrecognized Applications list. This has been corrected. o Audit Loader Customize Offline Area list was empty when creating a new Operation. This has been corrected. o System BIOS change detection did not work. This has been corrected. o Column sorting in the Software Identification Manager caused loss of synchronization if applications were edited. This has been corrected. o The Offline Scanner did not submit Hardware or Software Inventory Jobs when it reached the license limit such that some (licensed) Clients were not scanned. This has been corrected; Clients that are within the licensed capacity will be scanned. o LANdeploy failed to launch on WIndows 2003 in a Terminal Services session. This has been corrected. o Client DMI data capture failed to work on some Clients. This has been corrected. o Windows' Network caching caused a rare problem with 'dangling' connections being left after the Client capture process completed. Several improvements have been made in this area. o The main Audit Client executable has been renamed and various support files have been moved into a subdirectory to reduce confusion. You should execute Audit.exe now instead of LuAudit.exe. o The Client now checks before using any Offline Area subdirectory, including if one has just successfully been allocated. It will try allocating up to 100 ids on each pass if it keeps seeing a clashing Client already there and it now avoids re-checking the same subdirectory repeatedly during each run. These changes allow a more rapid recovery after an Offline Area has been lost (e.g. as a result of disk failure). o The Software Distribution Client Agent now checks the main Client .INI file for debugging being enabled, as well as in its own data files. o Multilanguage support for Swiss and Austrian German has been added. o Various other localization-related fixes have been included. Version 2.30 provided the following improvements and problem corrections: (General Issues:) o Oracle databases on non-Windows servers suffered a problem with retrieving Hardware Inventory data. This has been corrected o Software Identification Wizard time-based tokens now work correctly o Operating System-related reports now correctly distinguish Windows XP and Windows 2003 o The Console failed to open on some platforms due to inconsistencies in support of some HTML/XSLT tags. This has been corrected o The Software Distribution Package Definition Editor now allows you to specify credentials in the KitPath that is subsequently presented as a default by the Software Distribution Wizard o The Software Identification Manager failed to prompt to save Rule changes when the selected Package changes o An occasional memory corruption that could cause the Console to vanish has been corrected! (Client Issues:) o The Client Directory Snapshot capture could be particularly time consuming on machines with virus scanners enabled as a result of the Version Info search. This process has been enhanced to use a previous Snapshot as a cache of Version Info data, thereby accelerating the process substantially on all but the first Client capture. o The Client Boot Process sometimes failed to write a temporary file when compressing Directory Snapshot information when the Client was installed in the Program Files tree. This has been corrected o The Client Boot Process sometimes failed to save an allocated Offline Id when the Client was installed in the Program Files tree. This led to Clients failing to 'push' and repeatedly allocating fresh Id's and subdirectories. This has been corrected o The Software Distribution Client sometimes reported "Checksum Error" as it started to process a Job when the Client was installed in the Program Files tree on Windows 2000/XP. This has been corrected o The Software Distribution Client's "User Logon Required" enforcement sometimes failed to identify if an interactive user was logged on when running on Windows NT/2000/XP. This has been corrected o The User Prompting Data Capture application is again able to load settings from .INI files (which was broken in v2.10!) o The Client's LocalSystem/user account detection failed on some non-English versions of Windows. This has been fixed Version 2.10 provided the following improvements and problem corrections: o Creating a Site that uses a pre-existing Offline Area could report an error if a non-Administrator account was used, in situations when elevated privileges were not required. This has been corrected. o The Find Offline Clients (Offline Auto-Populate) Operation could abort when run interactively when the first Offline Area was not available. This has been corrected; any Offline Area(s) being unavailable will still allow the Operation to continue scanning other Offline Area(s). o The Find Offline Clients (Offline Auto-Populate) Operation previously refused to accept a Client nodename change when the new nodename was already in use in the database. This has been changed so that the database entry for the new nodename is now deleted and the old Client's data is renamed across. There can be a situation where two genuinely distinct Clients are 'fighting' over a single Offline Area subdirectory and this can result in repeated "nodename change" reports on the Host. The new Client is able to detect this situation and will automatically allocate itself a new subdirectory/id and a subsequent run of the Find Offline Clients Operation will latch onto the new locations. Note that multiple runs of the Find Offline Clients Operation can be required to resolve this situation and use of the Offline Scanner is recommended. This means that such 'fights' will now be resolved automatically, without requiring any user intervention. o The Find Offline Clients (Offline Auto-Populate) Operation would not always report that the Enterprise license capacity has been reached. This has been corrected; an appropriate error is now displayed if the license limit is reached as a result of new Clients found. o Creating a Site that uses an Offline Area in a subdirectory of an existing share could result in incorrect configuration of the Client kit. This has been corrected. o LANdeploy is now able to recover from a pre-existing Client/Agent installation where all of the Client files have been deleted. o Software Inventory Add and Remove package Change History events were logged on every scan for applications with names longer than 40 characters. The database fields concerned have been widened to 60 characters and the code has been changed to take account of this when publishing and updating packages that have names even longer than this. o There have been various minor usability improvements in the Console. o Software Distribution would fail to execute a Job on a Client if the account specified has never logged-on with that PC. This has been corrected, including with Roaming Profiles. o Software Distribution Jobs could fail on some non-English versions of Windows NT/2K/XP. This has been corrected. o The Client could cause an interaction with the Novell NetWare Client such that normal browsing through Network Neighborhood would not work after the Enterprise Client had made a cross-network connection. This appears to be a problem in the implementation of the NetWare Client and we have implemented a workaround that removes the interaction but at the cost of a higher risk of failure to make a network connection in the Enterprise Client. o The 16-bit Client is now working again for Windows 3.x support. Note that we intend to freeze 16-bit support at v2.10. Console compatibility with v2.10 16-bit Clients will continue indefinitely. o The Client Selection dialog now shows improved Client count information, making it clearer with combinations of Groups and specifically-selected Clients. o The Software Metering Summarizer could delete itself and fail to run on a Host with a lowercase machine name. This has been corrected. o The $SWCAPTURE Client Property could sometimes reflect an hour away from the actual data capture time. This has been corrected. o The Client Selection dialog now uses a simple listbox (without checkboxes) so it is now easy to shift-select/control-select large groups of Clients. A selection count has also been added o Unrecognized Application directory Events are no longer produced by Software Inventory Jobs, since this information is now stored in a separate database table o The Copy Group feature now copies any Natural Language information o The database purge Operations (Job Logs and Change History) now work correctly o "Explore Offline Area" sometimes caused the Console to crash if it was not possible to make the network connection. This has been corrected o The Console would sometimes report Schedulers as running when they weren't. This has been corrected o Inconsistencies have been removed in the count of Clients processed by some Scheduled Jobs o The Offline Autopopulate ("Find Offline Clients") Operation and the Offline Scanner have been enhanced to provide automatic and ongoing maintenance of Clients after they have been discovered. This includes detection of nodename changes and drive additions/removals on Clients. o Updated CPU recognition support o Various improvements to the reports 6 Known Problems, Restrictions and Notes ========================================= Localization-Related Issues --------------------------- Please report any localization-related problems to help us to provide a rapid correction. Patch Management Issues ----------------------- Deployment of Microsoft's Automatic Update client is occasionally non-silent. We have not seen this in any production environment but please beware that Microsoft's installer may display a prompt even when the silent mode has been requested. 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. Microsoft SQL Server -------------------- The following database management Operations work correctly on Microsoft Access and on Oracle databases but fail on Microsoft SQL Server: o Delete Job Logs o Delete Metering Data o Delete Change History Data This is caused by SQL syntax inconsistencies across these databases and the following command lines can be used as a workaround for SQL Server in place of the normal Operation Customizations: Delete Job Logs: $DSNACCESS "PROMPT=Delete Old Job Logs?" /SQLUPDATE "SQL=Delete from NETJOBLG Where ENDDATE < '$DD-MMM-YYYY(-60)$'" Delete Metering Data: $DSNACCESS "PROMPT=Delete Old Metering Data?" /SQLUPDATE "SQL=Delete from SWMDETAIL Where FINISHTIME < '$DD-MMM-YYYY(-60)$'" Delete Change History Data: $DSNACCESS "PROMPT=Delete Old Change History Data?" /SQLUPDATE "SQL=Delete from NODEHISTORY Where ENTRYDATE < '$DD-MMM-YYYY(-60)$'" Similarly, the "Not Pushed Recently" Group fails on SQL Server. The following SQL syntax can be used in place of the default (replacing the '#' date delimitors with single quotes): SELECT DISTINCT NODENAME FROM HWUPDATE WHERE CREATEDATE < '$MM/DD/YY(-31)$' 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. Other Issues ------------ The Software Distribution Post-Process command is not supported when using LANdeploy ("Distribute Client Software" Operation). The Post-Process command is available when using the main Software Distribution module ("Distribute Software"). The use of 'high' character codes in passwords is not recommended. These often non-printable characters can be entered by pressing and holding the Alt key while typing a numeric code using the keypad. There are inconsistencies related to the handling of the following character codes in Windows such that their use is not supported in PC-Duo Enterprise: 125, 127, 174-224, 226-229, 231-240, 242-245, 247, 249, 251, 252, 254. 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. 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