Diary of a Network Geek

Okay, I’m not totally sure why…

But, it’s still cool. My darling wife mentioned an interesting website in her blog yesterday: TextImage.Com It let’s you take images and convert them to text, html, or “Matrix”. So, if you want an old-style, gigantic sig file, convert a favorite graphic to text and include it in all your e-mails! Or, for an interesting effect on a webpage, ditto, only to html. And, well, I don’t think I’d ever actually use the “Convert to Matrix-style”, but it’s still cool.

So, what the heck, it’s Friday, go check it out!

Er, well, actually, it’s specific to ZENWorks.

I’ve been yapping about all the ZENWorks desktop imaging stuff that I’ve been doing lately and, apparently, a couple of you have been listening because you’ve asked for the CD. Well, I’m pleased to provide it for you.
A couple of notes, though…
1) You’ll have to edit the ISO to update the “settings.txt” file to reflect your own default server.
2) If you choose “Automatic” from the first menu, you’ll get an error because this shell script has been modified to TFTP a menu to the local server. (This link let’s you grab an example.)
3) The script that pulls the menu tries to hit ZFD1, so you either have to change that or add a DNS entry for it.

I think that’s it, but I’m not going to support this, ya’ hear? Y’all are on your own! I spent the better part of a month working this bit out and I know that it’s not perfect, but it works for us.
Oh, yeah, here’s a link to the ISO. (Be warned, it’s about 10meg. It didn’t shrink when I ZIPed it, so I just uploaded the ISO straight.)

Good luck!

Note: I removed the ISO due to lack of downloads and space issues. And, also, it’s probably so far out of date that it’s not really useful any more.

Hey, it’s fun to me!

Yeah, so this is what I’ve been working on for the past two weeks. Well, not so much the USB part, but the rest of it. Along the way, we did a lot of work getting the boot image we were working on to run of a USB JumpDrive which was pretty cool. There are a lot of tools to use for this, but we mainly worked with SysLinux. This also seems to be what Novell used to make their boot image with, so I figured it was a good choice!
First, though, I had to use a tool from HP. I used an older version, but the one currently listed as Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device, version 2.00.006 A (6 Feb 04) should still do the trick. But, once you’ve done that, the tutorial at SysLinux should get you along the right path.
Or, if you just want to try out Linux, or Unix, you can try UnixKit for Windows. I saw this the other day on the ScreenSavers. Actually, it was one of Leo’s Tips. Last damn thing good about that show.

Anyway, if you’re a hardworking network geek like me, you deserve to have a little fun with a USB drive. It’s Friday, go for it!

Updated 04-17-09: Link to HPDriveKey utility had gotten outdated, so I updated it.

Okay, here’s some more on that. The article was out Sunday night and based on this article on YahooNews, that’s helped Novell’s stock price up. Also, this article referred to the proposed “merger”, not a buyout. Of course, since Sun seems to have the bigger bank account I’m betting they’re going to be in charge.
When I checked Novell’s website, the last big news story was about Novell’s new software contract with the US Government. Nothing to sneeze at, but I’d have hoped to see something more about a potential merger/acquisition.

Well, that’s one rumor.

According to this article on ZDNet, Sun has been talking about acquiring Novell. Apparently, they’re after SuSE, in part because of IBM’s heavy involvement in that particular Linux distro. On the other hand, Sun was outbid by Novell when Novell bought SuSE last year. Hmm, interesting…
But, I don’t think it’s going to happen. First of all, why force a company to buy a company that you “want” just to turn around and pay more to get that same company that you were out-bid for? Not really logical, is it? Secondly, the article says that Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz was quoted as saying “…we’re considering all our options”. So, it may just be an “option”. You know, sort of like Oracle buying, oh, say, PeopleSoft was an “option”. An option that didn’t work out so well. At least, not yet.

Well, anyway, it sure is an interesting piece of news! I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

My eyes are practically crossed!

I’ve been going around and around with the Novell ZENWorks Imaging boot CD Linux partition trying to get it to boot a laptop via a USB CD-ROM for the past two days! I guess the good news is that I’ve made progress.
For those of you who care, but don’t know, the ZENWorks imaging boot.iso was built with ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX, which are pretty close to the same thing. I know because I’ve practically rebuilt the whole damn Linux disk image it uses when it loads! So far, I’ve added the menuing system that I worked on last week and added support for the USB drives on a Dell laptop into two of the Novell default menu items. Oh, and I also set it to pull DHCP settings when it boots off the USB drives, too. I’ve been testing that on a Lexar Media 256 MB USB JumpDrive, BTW. And we made that happen with ISOLINUX. When I get it all worked out, I’ll burn a CD and we’ll make sure it runs from there, too. It’s been a real challenge, but it’s pretty cool to have a real technical challenge to work on for a change. Sometimes it’s frustrating since I’m doing this on my own laptop and that means I don’t have a regular system yet, but I figure that it’s “motivation”!

Anyway, when I get it all done, I’ll post all the scripts so that other folks and use them if they want.
Oh, yeah, I also installed Mozilla earlier this week. I “upgraded” my Netscape and found that I couldn’t send or reply to e-mail anymore! Damn! So, I went to the “source” so to speak and, so far, it’s been great. Mozilla is what Netscape is based on and you can’t hardly tell the difference, at least in the UI. (Which is a fancy way of saying that I like it and I’m very comfortable using it.) I highly reccomend it to you, especially if you’re looking for an IE replacement!!

I’ve been doing a lot of reading!

Though, I have to admit that I haven’t actually read Learning the Bash Shell, I have used it quite a bit in the last week working out my menuing solution. Of course, I know that I can never go too far wrong with an O’Reilly book, but still this one was worth it’s weight in gold this past week.
Okay, so I know I’ve been going on and on about this, but still, it really is a great solution. I had to write a script that was easily updateable, simple for the end user and could be dynamic enough to serve an entire world-wide distribution. I came up with the basic menu and the script to TFTP it over from a remote location with help from Google. But, then we needed to parse an IP address without using anything more than GREP and native tools (i.e. no SED or AWK). How to do it? Pattern matching that I learned from this book. Then, we had to read in the date, without access to the DATE command! How’d I do it? Again, parsing information using pattern matching I learned in the book. Oh, and a bunch of other things, that I also read in this book.
So, in short, though I may not actually read the whole thing through, I will use this sucker as a reference for quite some time.

I never thought they’d come in handy with Netware!

But, they sure have this week. I’ve been working on a project at my new job that centers around ZENWorks. See, we have a whole bunch of companies now, and they all have their own idea of how to run their portion of the network. Well, we’re trying to get it all unified under one vision, namely ours. Toward that end, we’re establishing a standard, of sorts, for workstation imaging. But, we want to stay flexible with it. As I wrote on Tuesday, we’ve got a fairly good menu system worked out with bash shell scripts and yesterday I figured out how to make the default ZENWorks Imaging Bootable CD TFTP the menu script over from the ZENWorks for Desktops server and load it. (The menu itself runs the standard commands for imaging, but strings several images together into one menu item.) And, from the title of this entry, you can guess where I did all that work. Yep, on a Linux workstation.
Thanks to ZENWorks CoolSolutions and this article, I was able to figure out how to uncompress the Linux image, mount it as a filesystem, change it, and put it all back. I used a shareware ISO editor to change the boot.iso to include the new image and the settings.txt file. Then, we burned that and, ka-pow! We’ve got a solution. I’m refining it today, but it works well enough now, in my opinion.

Man, I love my new job! Novell and Linux together make a great team!

Wherever it goes, it goes too fast!

I guess I should have anticipated being so overwhelmed by my new job, but I didn’t. I mean, I really, really love it, but I’m so tired now. I guess part of it is the stress of adapting to a new environment and digging all those old Novell skills out for use. Of course, that’s one of the nice things, too.
In the past week, I’ve learned a whole bunch about ZENWorks for Server and ZENWorks for Desktops, since that’s what we’re focusing on right now. We’ve got to get the desktop images worked out for the remote sites. And, we have to test the system I developed for letting the monkies in the field to roll the images out with a minimum of thinking. So, how did I do that, you ask? Well, gentle reader, I learned shell script. I found the basic source for a menu system on the web and tailored that to our needs. I got a little help from my co-worker on syntax for the ZENWorks portion, and I still have to test the TID I found on integrating it into the PXE boot system, but, the way I have it set up, it’s very easily updateable from a central location. See, I made a shell script that TFTPs the most current menu to the local machine then loads it. That way, we can send a very static disk image to Dell and our users in the field can simply choose their machine type from a menu to get the latest image! It’s pretty damn good for my first two weeks!
So, anyway, even though I’m tired and I work in a closet, I’m really digging this new job.

More soon. I promise!

I work in a closet off the server room.

No, really, I do. I’m actually liking the new job, except for the fact that we don’t have offices yet. So, in reality, I’m sharing a storage closet off the server room with someone else. Okay, it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it’s starting to get a little tedious. I don’t even have my own office phone yet!
In all fairness, though, my new boss is working to get us both our own offices, but there aren’t any available near the rest of our group. So, soon, I hope, I’ll be better off than Melvin from Office Space. In the mean time, though, I actually am having a good time. So far, in the past two weeks, I’ve learned about Zenworks for Dekstops and Servers, both 6.5, and about shell scripting.
We’re working on getting an image down for the new sites that we’re going to be in charge of rolling out, but it’s going to take more than one image. Also, we need to have it set up so that local IT staff can reimage machines with a minimum of fuss or muss. So, we hit on the idea of making a text menu in a shell script that gives them choices on what image to apply. Between the two of us, we worked out a nifty little menu system. Now, we just have to figure out how to modify the standard Zenworks for Desktops imaging parition so that it TFTPs the most current menu from a server and runs it. Shouldn’t be too much trouble, now that I’m getting the hang of shell scripting. Not much different than batch files, really. And, a lot more fun that just being a backup monkey!

So, in short, even though I may work out of a storage closet at the moment, I really, really like my new job.