Ghost Only setting partial Configuration Info

[cswilson1976]

Ghost 7.5

The ghost Cloning sesion works great, so do most of the configuration, the only things that dont seem to be working are the changing of the Computer name and the Changing of the Static IP Addresses.

In a lab of 40+ systems they will all come up with the same Computer name and a dynamic IP, But the following do get set properly, Work Group, Gate way IP, DNS servers, Blanked out Netware User.

Has anyone else ran into this problem
chrisw@mail.nipissingu.ca

 

[cswilson1976]

Also, the only messages that it brings up on the console is a warning message about applying a Static IP to a Dynamic

 

[bones5876]

Just wondering what OS are you running on the systems and how have you setup your ghost console eg. tasks, configurations and other settings?

 

[cswilson1976]

Ghost console 7.5
Ghost client 7.5
Client OS 2000, SP3
notable software on clients Cleanslate(disabled), NAV 7.6 Corp. Novell Client 4.80

At the console I have tried both with custom configs. As well as with manualy setting the default configs to exactly what I want to no avail. The configs should work as they worked with the prior image that was in the teaching labs.

The image is a 8 span set(Split at 680mb so that they can be backed up on CDs and used to reimage systems that are not part of the network)

 

[fontys]

I've got a similar problem.

Environment:
WAN running on novell and nt appr. 5000 clients
clients: w98 and novell client
Ghost server: ghost enterprise 6.5 on w2000 advanced server
130 clients are imaged every night because they are used bij students

Problem:
I use a machine configuration template for all pc's with the 'apply computer name'-box blanked out(I can't use the asterixes, it pollutes the NDS). In the 5th step of the cloning proces it is supposed to change the machine configuration to the pcname specified in each machine configuration. In appr. 1% of the 130 cloning processes it takes on the identification(see control panel/network/identification)of the machine I made the image on, so the client starts up with the following message: protocol 0, error 38 machine allready exists on network.

I can't upgrade to 7.5, the boss won't pay(yet) and I too am not fully convinced that this will solve the problem. I am also thinking of small network traffic hickups. We've placed sniffers but no outcome yet.

This is the last problem I have to tackle for a fully automated cloning setup. Please help, all suggestions are helpfull.

With regards, Hans Rademaker

 

[bones5876]

Just a further question is the name you are changing the machines to the same length as the name of the originally cloned system? I have seen problems like this when the original name and the new name you want after a clone are different lengths. Also a few more things to check would be to make sure that the ghost client that you loaded on the workstations definately has the current server name that the ghost console is running on. If you are ghosting them all at the same time also you must have it setup as dhcp or else if it comes up together they will conflict and not be able to re join the domain with the new computer name.

 

[fontys]

Thanks Bones, but I've come to an entirely different insight. The problem I described has something to do with a failing connection. At the configuration-change the client has to get its proper name from the ghost-database. Something appears to go wrong in the connection and the client falls back on the pcname embedded in the image. It has something to do with flooding the switches with to much bandwidth. This also applies to cloning big groups of clients(let's say 35). This mostly goes well except when one or more clients of the group are not connected. Then the ghost server will use the server-timeout to search the switches for the missing pc's. This causes so much traffic (and maybe collisions) on the switches that the ghost-server can't even cut in on time with its server-timeout. Sometimes it goes more than 20 minutes over the server-timeout before the cloning starts, and sometimes the entire session goes to crap. So it is the switch-problem we have to solve instead of the pcname-problem.

If you have any suggestions, please tell me, I am no switch-expert so I can use all the help.

The configuration:
Ghost server is properly set up(enterprise 6.5)and static ip, the to be cloned pc's all on the same switch, server on master switch, client and server-nic's set to 100Mbits/full, clients all on their own VLAN, Cisco c3548 and c4006-switches.
We can't give the switch-ports a static ip, the pc's are used by students and they are born hackers.
We can't set the server-nic to 10Mbit, some sites use very big images.
We need to clone big groups per session.

So, the big question is: how to reduce traffic on the switches, how to stop the ghost server to search the vlan for missing pc's.

Please help.

Hans