About
I have been working with SMS and Configuration Manager for 8 years and have 14 years of overall experience in IT. I currently reside in Cincinnati, Ohio and work as a Senior Network Consultant for a leading IT company in the area. On Blog I will share my real world experiences, solutions, best practices and many more wonderful things with SCCM.
Please feel free to leave your comments and thank you for visiting my blog.
Kind Regards,
Tom Ziegler
Hey Tom,
I was wondering…is it possible to build a collection based on AD attribute, such as job description. I know how to do this via a WQL query in SCCM, but usually I do this based on a user’s OU.
If it is possible, do you know the what the query would look like?
Thanks,
Ryan
Ryan,
The collection may look something similar to this
select * from SMS_R_User where SMS_R_User.UserContainerName = “BCTEST\\USERS”
I did not see a job description as an available option to pull from in the queries. you may be able to modify the SMS_def.mof file to pull that information in, then create your collection.
Thanks,
Tom
Tom-
Good morning. I’m wondering if you know of an easy way to reboot machines via SCCM. For instance, say I want to reboot all the machines in a certain collection, how would I do this the easiest and most efficient way? Thank for your assistance.
-James
I know Right Click Tools for sccm has a reboot script that will allow you to reboot a system. I can not remember if it will allow you to reboot a collection of computers.
I managed to get stuck in the middle of creating a new task sequence to install Microsoft Lync and its patch.
When I try to add the entry to Install Software, install a single application, I run into a problem. I can browse to select the correct package, but the Program field remains blank. I can’t figure out what is wrong with the package that it’s not seeing the program, because I’ve already created an advertisement for this program to install it.
Any thoughts as to what I’m doing wrong?
Fred,
You see the package but not the program itself? Look at the program you wish to run. The program must be set to run whether or not a user is logged in and with admin priveleges in order to run within a task sequence.
Hope this helps,
Tom
Tom,
I’ve recently accepted a new position with a company and have stumbled into a bit of a mess with regards to the IT Dept. The previous sys admin liked to tinker with stuff & had installed SCCM 2007 onto a server in a somewhat haphazard manner. What I’m looking for is a graceful way to uninstall the server so that it will not adversely affect the domain. I’m positive that the number of correct methods of retiring a SCCM server is far fewer the number of wrong ways & I’d like to avoid any issues if possible.
Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks.
The recommended way is through add/remove programs. How complex is your site? Remember, when reinstalling SCCM, do not reuse the site code.
Thanks,
Tom
The site isn’t complex but there is no documentation and I do not plan on re-installing SCCM for some time. I just wanted to clean up this domain as much as possible in a graceful & planned way before I went much further as there is a lot of issues here that need addressed first. If I can reclaim the hardware that the SCCM virtual machine resides on that will help but I didn’t want to do it in a manner that would leave residual traces (aside from the extended schema) & potentially cause me issues down the road.
Like I said, the dept. is really a wreck & I have all of the problems I need right now without self-inflicting any additional ones. So if a simple add/remove works, that’s good news. At some point in the next couple of years I may introduce SCCM back in to this environment when time, planning & licensing permit. Thanks again.
I am new to administering SCCM and we are in an environment using VMWare VDI’s using Unidesk layering. I am trying to get the SCCM client to install automatically and have set up the Client Installation Methods and the Active Directory System Discovery. The collections are picking up the new VDI’s that are created successfully and appears that the ccmsetup.exe is getting copied over to the CCM folder properly, but it is not actually installing the client. I checked the logs and it appears that the discovery wrote the DDR files properly. Is there a way to narrow down why the .exe is getting copied but is not running?
What is the ccmsetup.log stating on the system in question?
It does not create a ccmsetup.log on the system, only copies the .exe over. I have looked at the ccm.log on the server and it shows a failure when copying the mobileclient.tcf files. Gives the error message : Error copying files defined in the TCF file (87)~ $$
Hello Tom! I am so glad I found this site. I was wondering if you could provide me some guidance with SCCM. FYI, I have never worked on SCCM, but I have a customer who needs to deploy software using SCCM. I have two questions:
1) If I have an XML file which has customizations for the software, and the requirement is that this XML be placed in the same folder as the MSI file for the customizations to take affect, can that be done? If so, can you point me to some documentation that would explain the process?
2) The customer has multiple regions. Each region will have a different customization XML file. Can software be deployed based on the OU the user belongs to?
Thank you!!
Aun,
It may depend on the program itself. Does the program allow for multiple xml files to reside in this folder? Is the method you mentioned the only way the xml settings will be applied?
you may be able to try something along these lines in your program:
msiexec /qn /i WPKGSetup.msi SETTINGSFILE=f:\wpkg\images\setup\settings.xml
Just create a program within the package for each xml file. Of course you would want to test this in a lab environment if possible
Thanks,
Tom
Tom,
Thanks for your prompt reply! This is basically for the Cisco NAC Agent. The instructions on the page say that the XML Configuration file should exist in the same directory as the MSI package. If branding is required, then those files need to be placed in another folder called “brand”. Once the MSI package is run, it will automatically pick it up. I got this info from the following page: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/nac/appliance/configuration_guide/49/cam/m_agntd.html#wp1773658
They have a line in there saying: “As long as the Agent configuration XML file exists in the same directory as the MSI installer package, the installation process automatically places the Agent configuration XML file in the appropriate Cisco NAC Agent application directory so the Agent can point to the correct network location when it is first launched.”
Followed by the following:
“Open a Command prompt on the client machine and enter the following to execute the installation:
msiexec.exe /i NACAgentSetup-win.msi /qn /l*v c:\temp\agent-install.log
”
Do you think that we could simply use the line above without using the SETTINGSFILE option?
Thanks!
Hey Tom,
I’m back with another question. So we can run the msiexec with the XML file in the same folder and it picks up the specific settings. The problem now is that I want to deploy a different XML file depending on the AD Server that the user machine is connecting to. Is that possible? I was thinking creating 4 different folders, with each folder having a customized XML file and the MSI installer. The batch script would check the AD server that the user is connected to and then run the MSI installer from the specific folder.
Do you have any suggestions or some way I can improve on the above?
Thanks!