DSM Release 2013.2 FrontRange Desktop and Server Management Release Notes Release 2013.2 (Build: 7.2.2.2331) Latest Update: December 12, 2013 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 4 Contact Us 4 Important Upfront Information 5 Required Base Release 5 Update from versions older than DSM 7.0 SP2 5 Installation Requirements 5 Preparing the Update 6 Modified Log File Directories 6 Client version reported in the basic inventory of the computer 7 Attention when updating clients from enteo v6.x 7 Installation Notes 8 Brief Installation Instructions 8 Do not extract the ISO image 8 Using the ExpertMode 8 Notice 9 New web enabled HEAT Remote replaces DSM Remote 9 DSM will keep supporting Windows XP until further notice 9 Execution Directory in Windows PE 9 Future Feature Discontinuation NetInstall 5.8 Compatibility Mode System Behavior Changes System Behavior Changes in DSM 2013.2 10 10 11 11 Parallel usage option for Standard Patch Deployment (SPD) and Advanced Patch Management (APM) 11 Network boot from OSD Proxy's localboot directory discontinued 11 System Behavior Changes in DSM 7.2.1 Job Policies New Features in release 2013.2 11 11 12 New Platforms Supported 12 Product Integration 12 Installation / Update 13 DMZ Support 13 FrontRange NetInstall 14 FrontRange OS Deployment 18 2 FrontRange Patch Management 19 FrontRange Management Suite for Citrix 19 DSM Web 19 Fixed Issues in release 2013.2 20 Installation / Update 20 FrontRange NetInstall 21 FrontRange Operating System Deployment 33 FrontRange Patch Management 33 FrontRange Management Suite for Citrix 35 Imaging 35 Virtualization 36 DSM Web 36 DSM Remote 36 Discovery 36 ITSM Integration 37 Migrate 7 37 Business Logic Proxies 37 Known Issues in release 2013.2 HEAT Remote 39 39 Under certain circumstances a DSM Remote session runs into timeout when trying to logon to a client where nobody is logged in (RM203343) 39 3 Introduction These Release Notes contain information on the most important changes in the new release of Desktop and Server Management Version (DSM 2013.2). Contact Us If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Sales Team or our Support Center if you need technical assistance; they will be happy to help. How to contact the Sales Team: Send an email to [email protected] Or call +49 (0)1802 340190 How to contact the Technical Support: Send an email to [email protected] Or call +49 711 340190 5048 4 Important Upfront Information Required Base Release This release is based on a DSM 7.0 SP2 installation (minimum). Update from versions older than DSM 7.0 SP2 If your DSM environment version is older than DSM 7.0 SP2 (Build 7.0.2.1535), please update to version DSM 7.0 SP2 first. FrontRange provides you with an ISO image of version DSM 7.0 SP2 for this purpose; it already contains the modifications required for the update to version 2013.2. Installation Requirements Please make sure the following requirements are met before starting the installation or update. System Prerequisites The Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1 is a prerequisite for all management points. WebDAV: DSM will only run successfully in your environment if you activate the WebDAV component on the infrastructure servers. On Windows Server 2003, you can activate this component from Control Panel > Add/Remove programs. Beginning with Windows Server 2008, however, this component has been removed from the source files. In this case, please download the WebDAV source files from the website http://www.iis.net/download/WebDAV and install them afterwards. Disk Space At least 1 GB disk space must be available on the depots during the installation / update process. Disk space requirement on the Management Point is between 600 MB to 1.2 GB. During the installation / update, the update packages are downloaded to the RepositoryCache of the respective Management Points. The package remains in the RepositoryCache after the update. This allows the system to download only the changes when the next update is executed (for example with a Hotfix Bundle). 5 Preparing the Update Before the update can be started the following changes to your DSM environment should be made. Configure the Polling Frequency for Package Preparation on the ORG Master Depot The Polling Frequency for Package Preparation of the Distribution Service (in charge of the ORG Master Share) should be reduced to 5 minutes, for example, to ensure the update packages are prepared in a timely fashion. The default value is 120 minutes. Update from a version before 7.2.1 hotfix bundle 7 Older versions of DSM do not contain the prerequisites to run the new update process. They need to be patched to enable the update to execute the required actions. This is done either by updating to DSM 7.2.1 hotfix bundle 7, or by running an eScript package via DSM or another mechanism to exchange and add files on all management point servers within the environment Using an eScript package (Requirement: Management Points must also be managed DSM clients): 1. Import the package into the existing environment. This special package can be found on the ISO image in the directory NetInstall\PrepareUpdate, or you will find them on the DSM share in the \UpdateSources\PrepareUpdate directory once the setup has finished copying files to the OrgMaster share. 2. Distribute the package in the environment. 3. Assign the package to all management points. 4. To replace some files, the management point servers will have to reboot. If using the eScript package is not an option the files can also be replaced by different means. You can determine which files need to be replaced by looking into the eScript package. It contains a sub directory for each version of DSM which supports an update. These directories also contain an update.cmd which stops the DSM services, replaces the necessary files and restarts the DSM services afterwards. To prepare your environment you have to copy the subdirectory which relates to the DSM version of your environment on every management point and execute the update.cmd locally on each managementpoint server before the update. The new files will not impact the availability of the environment. An immediate update of the whole environment to the new version will not be required after installing these files. Modified Log File Directories To make troubleshooting easier and to improve the support of DSM, all update-related log files are now located in the new logs subdirectory Update. This includes the updated-related log files written during the update of the Business Logic Server that were previously located in the BLS\Update subdirectory. You could move the subdirectory Update one level up prior starting the update so that it resides directly in the root of the log file directory to prevent the confusion of having two Update directories on your system. 6 Client version reported in the basic inventory of the computer After updating to the DSM release 2013.2 the client version number in the basic inventory will be reported as 7.2.2.2331. Attention when updating clients from enteo v6.x If there is any chance that clients are still on an enteo v6.x binary level please pay extra attention when updating to the current release. In this case the Site Properties setting Load DSM Client binaries into cache before installation must be set to No before the update is applied. This should be done long enough before the update to the current release is done to make sure that all clients updated their configuration. After the update keep the setting until all clients updated themselves to the current release. If the property is set to Yes there is a high probability that the 6.x clients won't be able to update themselves to the current release and must be updated manually! 7 Installation Notes Brief Installation Instructions This release can be downloaded as an ISO image from our website. When you are logged on, you can find the ISO image in the Drivers & Downloads › DSM directory. How to install the ISO image: 1. In the DSMC, set the report level of the log files to detailed (level 0). 2. Create a complete backup of the Business Logic Server (BLS), the depots and the DSM database (DSMDB). 3. We recommend deactivating the virus scanner on the Business Logic Server (BLS) and the database server (SQL Server) during the complete update process (including the UpdateManager). This prevents possible problems during the copy phase. 4. Make sure the .NET Framework Version of the DSM related application pools in the IIS Manager is set to v2.0. For IIS 6.0 you can see the ASP.NET version in the context of the Management Point Web Site properties, it must be set to 2.0.50727. 5. Make sure that the user logon works for authentication with the BLS and that it has been entered correctly on the ORG object in the DSMC configuration table section Shared Infrastructure > User name for BLS authentication. 6. Run the update directly on the BLS (depending on the RDC version mstsc.exe /console or mstsc.exe /admin). A Remote Desktop session is not possible. 7. Reset the report level of the log files to the former value. Updating the DSM environment might require extensive database transactions. Please do not abort the update before it is finished. Updating databases of the Business Logic Server and Proxy may take up to 45 minutes in large environments and writes the logfile Update\bls_Update_DbMigration.log. Do not extract the ISO image To update your DSM environment, be sure not to extract the ISO image you downloaded from the FrontRange website. Instead, mount the ISO image or burn it to a DVD and insert it to your computer. Extracting the ISO image may corrupt the file time stamps and severely damage your DSM installation. Using the ExpertMode In case your update gets hung up because i.e. a remote management point was unreachable, the UpdateManager.exe can be started with the command line parameter /ExpertMode. Using this mode allows for skipping specific update steps - assuming completion of those steps in the console at a later point in time when the Server is back online. Please be very cautious using this "ExpertMode". Always try to run the update steps using the Update manager in the given order first and only "skip" them in case of errors that would otherwise prevent you from continuing the entire update procedure. 8 Notice New web enabled HEAT Remote replaces DSM Remote To switch to the new HEAT Remote you will have to contact your sales representative and sign a License Transfer agreement. Once signed you will receive HEAT Remote license keys as well as a license file which enables the integration and the new remote software. DSM will keep supporting Windows XP until further notice Even though Microsoft will end its support for Windows XP in 2014, we are aware that XP is still used productively by many of our customers, and as long as we can technically facilitate XP support and are not forced by technology changes we will continue supporting this platform. A possible scenario that might change this in the future would be for instance a Microsoft .NET 5.0 requirement, which might offer us new and important development capabilities, but might not be offered by Microsoft for XP Clients. Execution Directory in Windows PE When the script is started the current directory is the directory where the script is located but there is no fixed directory such as x:\windows\system 32 or x:\windows\temp. The variable %~dp0 (drive and path of %0) in batch files contains the path to the file that is currently being executed. To ensure that OS packages can be executed successfully in different boot environments and different DSM versions, the script must be written in such a way that it can run in any directory. For further information refer to chapter Creating an OS Package - General in the FrontRange OS Deployment (OSD) Online Documentation. 9 Future Feature Discontinuation NetInstall 5.8 Compatibility Mode Starting with the release DSM 2014.1 next year, the NetInstall 5.8 Compatibility Mode will no longer work on DSM clients. Therefore, with DSM 2013.2, we already hide the activation option for the old Component Model and make it only accessible via the RAW mode. Customers that have activated this mode in the past can still use it and work on making this mode obsolete in their environments until the next release. 10 System Behavior Changes In case of standard system behavior changes due to the implementation of new features or issue fixes, such paragraphs would be flagged with the exclamation mark symbol as shown. System Behavior Changes in DSM 2013.2 Parallel usage option for Standard Patch Deployment (SPD) and Advanced Patch Management (APM) As long as both license keys are present in the system, it is now easy with DSM 2013.2 to evaluate APM and at the same time keep SPD productive. While honoring the configured schedules of both modules, the PM service can now execute catalog imports and perform patch downloads for both Patch Management options. This parallel execution now also works in case the schedule for SPD was not properly disabled, despite the fact that the SPD cleanup assistant was executed successfully with DSM 7.2.1. It is therefore very important to either remove the SPD license from the system or verify and disable the SPD time schedules before updating to DSM 2013.2. Network boot from OSD Proxy's localboot directory discontinued The functionality to deposit files in the OSD Proxy's localboot directory for the network boot of OSD clients has been replaced by the OSD Self-Service feature introduced in DSM 7.1. Please find the specifics documented in the OSD Self-Service section of the Online Help or in the adjacent feature booklet. The functionality to deposit files in the OSD Proxy's localboot directory for the network boot of OSD clients has been removed. System Behavior Changes in DSM 7.2.1 Job Policies Job policies with the job trigger At every login, AutoInstall interval and Finishing an OS installation now behave like regular packages. That means: Other job policies like While starting a package are triggered Job policies for Starting/Finishing an installation session will run Enter and leave maintenance windows scripts will be executed This can cause problems if e.g. the release script of the Maintenance Window has an Initiate System Shutdown command and there is also an AutoInstall interval Job Script associated, which was only allowed to run inside the MW. In this case the servers would constantly reenter the MW and leave it by rebooting the machine. This can be prevented by changing the Job Script to type On Start Installer Run. 11 New Features in release 2013.2 New Platforms Supported Windows 8.1 Hyper-V Server 2012 as managed client Product Integration New HEAT Remote Integration Starting with this release we offer a new Remote Control tool to be integrated with DSM. The new tool is able to cross Network boundaries without the need for a VPN connection, but utilizes on a connection handling service on the Web. HEAT Remote now also allows for Remote connection to machines that despite having internet access, cannot be reached in any way from the internal network due to firewall and NAT limitations (Home Office, Coffee Shops, Hotels, etc.). New HEAT MDM Integration DSM now offers the capabilities to integrate with HEAT MDM. This new integration will be delivered in two steps. The first functionalities with DSM 2013.2 include Synchronization of HEAT MDM managed devices directly into the DSM CMDB Easy configuration of the integration communication parameters Embedded HETA MDM administration interface Storage of Administrative User’s HEAT MDM credentials for single sign on Detail view for each Mobile Device takes you directly to the device’s inventory page in HEAT MDM Further integration options are planned for the next release of DSM 2014.1 next year. If you have not seen HEAT MDM and are interested in a demo or trial, please feel free to contact your FrontRange sales representative. 12 Installation / Update The update process for DSM environments was completely revised and remanufactured The new update enables customers to define management points in the DSMC and run the MPInstallUpdate.exe later directly on the management point It is now possible to start the UpdateManager.exe from another computer than the primary BLS, but we still recommend to always start the UpdateManager.exe on the primary BLS AutoImport Upgrade behavior optimized When updating to a new DSM version, a new revision was created for each AutoImport package - even if there were no changes for this package. Going forward, we will only create new revisions, if the package content has actually changed. Limitations: This will not yet work for updates to 2013.2 - but for all future updates. Some OSD packages will always change due to binary files that are compiled in each build, so they will still be imported with every update. DMZ Support Org Master SMB access is no longer required to install a management point But the SMB access to nearest depot will be a prerequisite for a management point installation. Relay Proxies are now capable of reversing the communications direction If SSL is configured on the IIS, it can be used for the BLS, BLP and RelayProxy communication Due to a new transport layer, notifications for e.g. OSD, WoL or FastInstall can now reach management points behind NATs or Firewalls 13 FrontRange NetInstall The StrGetElement eScript command has been enhanced to use either multiple separation characters or multi-character strings as separators Separators can be whole strings or a set of different characters - defined by the Search Mode. The command returns the element specified by the index from the string list. Results the found element between the separators (empty, if one separator immediately follows the next) none (variable remains unchanged) if there are no matching separators found "", if index is > 0 and there is at least one element in the beginning but the indexed element doesn't exist. The old command behavior persist if no Search Mode is selected (only possible with existing commands for compatibility). When modifying an existing StrGetElement command, a Search Mode has to be selected. New Condition "IsProcessRunning" The "IsProcessRunning" condition allows checking for running processes. It allows searching for either process name or the window title and it supports wild cards. The "CallScript" command now allows for executing scripts natively in a 64 bit process A new RegValue condition has been added that allows for direct analysis against the actual value of a Registry Keys Pinning items to the start menu is now possible using the command "PinToStartMenu" The MSIInstallProduct command now offers an option to perform an installation verification after the installation If the option is activated a successful MSI installation would be treated as failed if the successful installation state is not properly reported back to the Installer engine as installed. On the other hand side, installation that threw error messages, but still completed successfully will now be able to reach a compliant status. The eScript commands "Set" and "SetGlobalVar" can now be configured not to log the activity in the installer’s log files to prevent confidential information like passwords to be written to logs in clear text The MSIIsProductInstalled condition was made generally available and is no longer considered Preview 14 The eScript command KillProcess now supports the wildcards '*' and '?'. Additionally it has been given the option to terminate all child processes of the process specified. When executing PowerShell scripts, the CallScript command now offers the possibility to define the .NET Framework version to execute the script with By default the latest locally installed Framework version is used. The NetInstall application hook can now be disabled by a simple registry key to prevent interoperability issues The following registry key disables loading of NiAMH.dll into all processes: HKLM\SOFTWARE\<Wow6432Node on x64 systems>\NetSupport\NetInstall\AutoInstallSettings EnableNiAMHHooking [DWORD] = 0 The value must exist before the client is installed on the machine. Otherwise you have to reboot after the next service installer run for the setting to have an effect. A new trigger for job policies "once per day" was added This trigger executes once per calendar day and does no longer require the last run to be more than 24 hours ago as the old "daily" job trigger. The "daily" job trigger has been renamed to "every 24 hours" in the UI. Support for localized software descriptions was added To provide localized descriptions for software packages and software sets to the end user (visible in the Installer and Software Shop) the property 'Description (End User)' has been added to the property group 'Software'. The description text can be defined in the following languages: English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese can be also be set/changed for already released revisions can be set on each individual revision, but when creating a new revision the existing strings from the previous revision are copied by default At time of installation the client computer will select the proper text based on its local language settings. Fallback rule: If defined, this localized package description is now shown both in the SW Shop and the AutoInstaller. If the localized strings are not defined, the regular 'Description' value of the package properties' is used, which cannot be localized. 15 By changing the file logo.png in the NetInst directory the customer can now replace the FrontRange logo by a custom image This affects the logo shown in the eTray -> About as well as in message boxes for clients using the aero design. This image must not be larger than 260 x 100 pixels, otherwise the original FrontRange logo is shown instead. It is now possible to import objects directly into static groups The CSV should look as follows 1 # Unidentified computers found by offline medium. 2 Name;SchemaTag;Group.Membership 3 TestComp1;Computer;<something> where <something> can be the name of an existing static group or the objectid of an existing static group or any LDAP filter describing an existing static group During the import of software packages the revision of the to be imported packages is now displayed Prepackaged applications for Office 2010 and 2013 were added An *.msp file to define the installation behavior is required, otherwise the Script has to be modified to install without MSP. When non ProPlus versions are deployed with the prepackaged script the script has to be edited to ensure proper referencing of the product MSI IDs in the MSI commands. As in earlier versions of enteo v6, most views in the DSMC are now dockable / floatable again When trying to select more columns in the DSMC via right-click on the column-header, too many entries in the dropdown menu were shown These entries are now structured in proper groupings. The column "Installation date" replaces the previous column name "Status achieved" in the policy view When using "Go to..." tasks, only the reasonable objects are now offered in the DSMC 16 The DSMC now utilizes data compression when communicating with the BLS By default compression support is now enabled for the BLS administration web service. It is now also possible to open the DSMC in raw mode when only a time bombed evaluation key is present The last comments of assigned policy instances are now cleared when the client is set to reinstall The Text viewer of the Packaging Workbench can now also display PowerShell scripts properly The property "System requirements (client)" is now also accessible inside the packaging workbench The visibility / prominence of the save button in the PWB was improved DSMDatabaseTuningAdvisor.exe can now be executed in silent mode to apply optimizations on a regular basis via batch scripts or via task scheduler The DSMDatabaseTuningAdvisor.exe can now be started with the following command line options. Parameter Purpose /Silent no UI shown, output to console /ConnectionString:<ConnectionString> ability to (pre)set the connection string, required in silent mode /Apply ignored in interactive mode, taken into account in silent mode (if given then pending optimizations are applied, if not given only the analysis is performed) The resulting log file bls_DatabaseTuningAdvisor.log can be found in the standard log file directory below BLS. 17 FrontRange OS Deployment The osdpxeconf.ini now allows MAC addresses to contain the "?" Symbol as a character wildcard, it is now also possible to filter for MAC addresses and SMBios Guids at the same time Example: "00-0C-29-??-??-??" would be a filter for any VmWare MAC addresses There is now a configuration option "Minimize" in the osdclnt.ini to run the WinPeBinClient minimized OS installation of Windows 8 via imaging is now also supported Experimental UEFI Support This feature allows OSD to work for UEFI devices without enabling BIOS compatibility (PXE) mode. ISO images created from a PE 4 / 5 boot environment are now able to boot on UEFI and BIOS computers if the ISO image was created with the windows ADK. The Partitioning and Windows Installation has been adapted for UEFI systems. The Windows PE boot environments were modified to contain a new environment variable "OSDFIRMWARE" that is either set to "UEFI" or "BIOS". OSD self-service can also be used for UEFI computers. Only Windows PE 4 / 5 Boot Environments created in 7.2.1 HF 6 or higher can be used to boot from UEFI devices This feature is still considered experimental because the file set of the boot environment might change in future versions (i.e. some boot environments might no longer work on UEFI systems after future updates). Limitations: Due to timing related issue the first network boot might fail if the required packages have not yet been downloaded by the OSD Proxy. If OSD self-service is used, the self-service package will be executed on clients that are unknown to the OSD Proxy during startup. Boot redirections will not work on the first boot attempt of a client. Redirection to another OSD proxy will not work. Please note, that some devices in UEFI mode use PXE implementations which do not match the PXE standard. If problems are encountered while UEFI devices are booted, it is recommended to contact the Hardware vendor to ask for proper UEFI PXE implementations. Changed Behavior: The PXE Service sends PXE Client option 43 only on port 4011 and no longer on Port 67. 18 The OSD default eventlog warning "The WaitToKillServiceTimeout is to low" will now only be reported if the value is set below 12 seconds To make it easier to work with other Domain Admin accounts than Administrator, the OS configuration templates that ship with DSM no longer have a default value for the Domain Admin account configured This means that the OS configuration package wizard will automatically ask for a Domain Admin account. FrontRange Patch Management It is now possible to define a timeout value for patch installations after which the installation will be automatically terminated The option is available as a variable on the "Managed Computers & Users" domain and is not activated by default. FrontRange Management Suite for Citrix Citrix publishing packages can now utilize Client specific variables such as %CurrentCitrixFarm%, despite the fact that the actual publishing action is performed via a central management point for sequencing reasons DSM Web It is now possible to execute changes via the DSM Web Console 19 Fixed Issues in release 2013.2 Installation / Update When a Management point is deleted that had the old enteo Inventory and Extended Reporting services installed, these services were not properly uninstalled (RM91621) A patch update on DSM site servers was failing due to changed files on the org-master depot (RM115166) If the "Transport Layer Service" was marked as "not installed" it could not be manually reinstalled again (RM118384) Using DNS alias names for BLS server name caused problems during update because pipe installer was used (RM122381) The BLS Authentication Account information was not checked for validity which cause a lot of customer updates to fail in the past (RM122457) This is now checked during the prerequisites checks with the new Update Manager. The re-installation of the BLP application was not possible after the Management Point was logically moved (RM202200) Management Point updates or installations no longer require access to the NCP file on the Org-Master depot share (RM202700) The installation of a BLP failed on a server, if this server had previously been used as BLS or BLP (RM202813) The DSM Setup failed to copy files to servers with Asian system locale and regional settings (RM204010) Under certain circumstances the DSMC crashed during the configuring of a Management Point (RM205168) The BLS Update failed if .NET Framework 4 was uninstalled (RM208332) The Installation of management points may have failed because the installation routine only checked for proper http bindings of the IIS and not for https bindings (RM208545) 20 A Management Point update did not update the client binaries either, if none of the actual management point applications had to be updated (RM209537) The Prerequisite-Check for Management Point installations now also checks for IIS Windows authentication (RM210400) Under rare circumstances the DSMC was crashing when trying to update the Primary BLS management point (RM210932) Under rare circumstances the AutoImport failed, because the wrong user was used to import the packages to the file system (RM208099) FrontRange NetInstall Files supposed to get installed by a CopyFileList command within the $BeginUninstallScript section of the Script actually also got deleted after the package uninstallation (RM160854) The InstallAssembly eScript command failed when used with .NET 4 Assemblies (RM204902) The commands PinToTaskbar and UnpinFromTaskbar did not work properly on x64 operating systems (RM206160) The MsgBoxEx command returned 'Cancel' instead of 'OK' although it timed out and 'OK' was specified as the default action (RM206960) Sometimes Windows writes a false path entry into a shortcut if the target does not exist and the CreateLink-command did not treat this as an error (RM210551) The MsgBoxEx command did display "Yes, No" buttons when it should have shown "Retry, Cancel" buttons (RM210994) InstallAssembly used newest .NET Framework version available to install an assembly instead of the matching version (RM212473) Changes to the policy property setting "Activation End Date" did not take effect until the BLS synchronization cache ('sync' folder) was renewed on the client (RM111425) 21 Logging was not sufficient to troubleshoot issues with auto-insert of computers, users or groups (RM117513) The IP of virtual adapters was not taken into consideration for auto-inserting a computer by rule (RM158925) The balloon tooltip displayed "successfully installed" even if an unstallation was performed (RM165885) Now the tooltip properly distinguishes between installations, uninstallations ,reinstallations and repairs. A job package assigned with the job trigger "Start of SoftwareSet" was not able to use the installation parameters from the software set (RM166295) Under certain circumstances the recalculation of policy instances for a computer failed if software sets with mandatory components got assigned (RM167851) Under certain circumstances site determination failed due to an faulty detection of the network connection state (RM201588) Optional software set components with fulfilled client-side prerequisites were not installed if the software set had already reached a compliant status (RM201718) In case the execution of the eScript-commands "RemoveFolder" and "RemoveDir" failed to remove a folder (file in use), the deletion of the folders wasn't performed during the next reboot (RM202197) Under certain circumstances IIS7.5 (W2K8R2) did not respond to client sync requests in a timely fashion (RM202623) Starting the auto-installer on a terminal server caused the privileged installer (NilsPSrv.exe) to run even if it was not necessary (RM202696) Invalid deltas in the client sync request were not properly rejected by the BLS and the client kept sending them over and over again which led to lots of exceptions in the log files (RM202987) The DSM client and BLS incorrectly handled inactive policy instances (RM203241) The BLS now sends less arbitrary OSD push jobs for component policy instances of OS software sets and a handle leak in the job transport has also been fixed. 22 The list of SQL error codes indicating that the DSMDB is currently unavailable has been extended (RM203292) The BLS maps certain SQL error codes to the exception "DSMDB is not available". For the client these exceptions result in the HTTP error code 503. This error code triggers Fall back for clients that sync against a BLP if a fallback to the BLS is configured in the DSM Configuration (under site settings). AD group memberships are now also checked against the local domain and not only against the Global Catalog (RM203413) The client no longer loads outdated add-on binaries (RM203520) The major, minor and service package number must match now. The old behavior sometimes caused crashes of client modules. Wrong AD Forest was used to query computer based variables (RM203533) In cases where the computer object lives in a different domain than the user account, the DSM Client can be set to "AD Forest Trust" mode via the following registry key. HKLM\SOFTWARE\<Wow6432Node on x64 systems>\NetSupport\NetInstall\InstallSettings DWORD EnforceUserDomainQuery = 1 This will cause the computer based variables to be queried separately form the AD forest the computer is managed in rather than the user’s domain. The client now continues to work from the sync cache even if the initial synchronization with the BLS fails (RM203563) This allows for instance to install missing user parts when the BLSs or BLPs are unavailable. Packages did not get installed on clients because the client synchronization sometimes failed with an GetMatchingParamDefsForSyncedSoftwareRevisions exception (RM204003) Clients failed to install packages, if a former revision of the package was already assigned with an installation parameter that was later deleted for the new revision (RM204102) When trying to reboot or shutdown in the middle of an DSM package installation a new and more accurate tooltip message "An installation is currently in progress. Your request to shutdown/reboot will be performed after package installation." will be displayed (RM204740) 23 The variable WSS.ERROR returned wrong value after the first PowerShell execution via CallScript if the PowerShell snap-in was missing but got installed during the same installer session (RM204960) Package uninstallation caused a false 64 bit file redirection setting if a command like "Execute" was skipped (RM205099) After the update of the client binaries from v6.2 to DSM 7.2.1 it occasionally happened that some files were still out of date (RM205792) Under certain circumstances the BLS did not response in a timely fashion (RM206157) When the client web service was experiencing very high load it was possible that two parallel threads were locking each other. The core service crashed if network devices without a name were found in the system (RM206447) WMISimpleQuery on large WMI name spaces such as "Win32_QuickFixEngineering" took a very long time to execute (RM207545) User parts which were installed under NetInstall 5.x with a version higher than 1 were always reinstalled after updating to DSM (RM207923) The uninstallation of an eScript component package (component model) failed if the property "Installation of user-related portion" was set to inactive (RM207701) This happened only if the command was executed via the pipe installer. An error could occur in the Client Sync process when calculating the client’s dynamic group memberships (RM207788) If errors occur when executing an eScript command using the pipe installer, these errors were ignored and the script execution was not reported as failed (RM208057) Invalid instances of job policies were not deleted if the package property "Uninstallation supported" is set (RM208243) A client sync could take up to 3 minutes if the Client Web Service was experiencing heavy load (RM208542) 24 Some network changes did not lead to a new site determination as expected (RM208498) This happened particularly for "virtual connections" which are established by connecting to a VPN. This misbehavior was introduced by a change in 7.1.0 which used the "Network List Manager" API introduced with Vista to detect network changes With this change the default method to detect network changes now uses the "Network Location Awareness" service from Microsoft. The DSM Runtime Service is now restarted automatically after a crash (RM208805) In some scenarios the BLS Load balancing/fall back would not work properly (RM209539) The BLS did not send information for packages that were referenced by installation parameters (e.g. OS setup file packages) to the client if that package was only referenced on a specific policy instance and not on the policy or package itself (RM210297) The properties containing the last calculated compliance information were sent to the client The properties containing the last calculated compliance information were calculated on the server and therefore partially contained outdated/incorrect information. The following properties are no longer sent to the client: BasicInventory.LastCalculatedSoftwareCompl BasicInventory.LastCalculatedPatchCompl BasicInventory.LastCalculatedDriverCompl The solely purpose of calculating and storing these properties per client is for quickly displaying the last known compliance status in the DSMC rather than having to calculate the compliance status for each machine over and over. Therefore these properties should never have been passed back to the client at all, as they do not reflect the actual status of the client, but rather a calculated status from the last time the client’s sync data was processed by the server. In case these properties have been used any eScripts, these scripts will no longer be able to resolve those variables. To check on pending installations on the client, the job triggers Starting an installation session and Finishing an installation session should be used instead. The installer runtime was improved to better handle cases where not all components of a component model were imported from NI 5.x (RM212010) Logs previously showed "loading all known databases". 25 Stopping a deny policy did not resume the installation of the assigned package (RM211403) Stopping a deny policy now behaves as if the deny policy was deleted or the target no longer belongs to the deny policy. This might lead to unwanted installations if customers have inactive deny policies. Pilot installations of component models inside a software set did not work (RM212450) Software package descriptions were truncated in the Software Shop when the text was too long (RM157721) The Software Shop now uses all available space and provides access to the full description via a hyperlink. ZIP engine failed to compress files with double byte characters (RM164270) Wrong distribution information was shown in the distribution tab for depots that are used multiple times in the Site structure (RM164584) Stopping the distribution service while it is extracting files during a work-install distribution led to a potential crash of the service (RM201159) Client binary packages in $SysDb$ were accidentally deleted by the distribution service if a site had more than one depot (RM203497) If an import of a software package failed, the package would be corrupted and could no longer be repaired (RM202412) New behavior: If there are more revisions in the DB than in the file set because the files of the new revisions could not be copied into the repository, a message box will inform the user about this trying to import the package again will NO LONGER create another copy of the package, but will repair the existing package (as long as copying the files can now successfully be completed) Package import might have failed with "Maximum request length exceeded" (RM203445) The import of packages with many revisions might have failed because the request sent to the administration web service exceeded the default request size of 4 MB. The maximum request length is now 32 MB. Imports or creation of MSI packages could have failed in some scenarios because the distribution service or SIS account was used instead of the current user account to communicate with the BLS Admin Web service (RM204009) With DSM 7.2.1 a package import sometimes failed with SOAP exception (RM204049) 26 Exporting packages failed if the destination for the export was a mapped network drive (RM205064) The Import of packages failed if a package contained a link to a SoftwareShopUiFolder which did not exist in the target system (RM207924) In rare cases a package was not shown in the import wizard due to inconsistent customer software property definitions between the export and import environment (RM208810) Import of packages and opening the Packaging Workbench failed due to missing NTFS permissions of the used Service Account (RM211062) Import of packages failed if the package source files were located on a network share (RM211209) The components of a PnP or MSI package were not always properly resolved during an import (RM211400) When importing prepackaged applications for Office 2007 / 2010, installation of these packages sometimes failed with the error "The language of this installation package is not supported by your system" (RM201587) If an SMB share connection was available, but a ping was blocked by firewall settings, the NCP could not be saved (RM115078) This is now possible as long as the Site property "Check depot availability via network protocol settings" is set to NO. An error occurred when creating a dynamic group with a condition on BasicInventory.LastSynchronization and the operator "NULL" (RM118412) Policy lists were no longer properly sorted if multiple changes were made to the property values of the objects in that list (RM146377) Custom tasks with restricted context visibility based on object type are now only shown in the context menus of the desired object type (RM149742) For the "IsInstalled" prerequisite unreleased software packages were not selectable (RM164309) 27 When software revisions were consolidated or deleted as part of a software import the software folder itself could not be deleted (RM164589) Sometimes the creation of complex dynamic filters with logical OR condition failed (RM164600) After updating a Software Set policy instance of a client with the "Advanced Pilot Option" function every further task led to exceptions (RM202334) This only happened when the set contained 2 components which both had an installation parameter with the same name, but different values. Under certain circumstances the consolidation of software packages with installation parameters led to policies that could no longer be displayed or deleted (RM202857) If the site definition contained more than 10 entries, the site definition list within the DSMC Overview showed no definition at all (RM203059) Multi select could not be used to update several policy instances of a computer to a newer revision (RM203211) Now all DSMC wizards accept the following formats for entering MAC Addresses: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX, XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX and XXXXXXXXXXXX (RM203511) When you tried to assign a package with the option "Is assignable" deactivated, the wrong error message "Software 'XYZ' is a template and cannot be assigned." appeared (RM203704) Deleting policies failed occasionally because no LongRunTask was generated (RM203744) User defined tasks for software objects did not show in the context menu of software packages (RM203783) When pressing DEL on member objects of a static group, sometimes the group membership was revoked, and sometimes the object itself was deleted (RM203824) The properties for username/password for BLS authentication were sometimes not shown in the infrastructure configuration window of the DSMC (RM203853) 28 Performance issues when expanding large OUs in the DSMC were resolved (RM203966) Sometimes the DSMC crashed when executing the task "View Distribution status" if some of the depots were not reachable (RM203968) Add-Ons requiring a one seat license like the DMZ Management Pack did not load properly (RM204347) Showing additional columns in the DSMC took a long time if some of the results contained 'not specified' or empty entries (RM204385) When moving multiple objects to another context via drag&drop (e.g. computers into a group), only the first selected object was really moved (RM204419) Wrong account was used to create new eScript packages (RM204449) The creation of eScript packages failed if the RuntimeService account did not have write permission on the DSM share. Now the Distribution account is used instead to create new packages. Target Name in Properties view of Computers and Users was not accurate (RM204496) On each computer the policy instances only showed the instance’s target name which was always the computer itself. Instead we now show the actual target of the policy (Machine, Group or Container) which led to the policy instance. When editing the filter of dynamic groups using criteria like "Base.ID", "Base.ModifiedBy", "Base.ModificationTime", "Base.CreatedBy" or "Base.CreationTime", an error popped up because a wrong LDAP filter string was sent to the server (RM204627) Unicode characters passed in LDAP queries are now handled correctly (RM204676) The "Apply"-Button in the "Define Execution Settings" dialog was always disabled (RM205007) Sometimes opening the eScript preview tab of a software package resulted in an error message (RM205591) When deleting job policies the "force delete" checkbox was not selectable (RM205968) The "force delete" option is now always checked as it made no sense to not force delete job policies. 29 The list of static or dynamic groups showed as empty after pressing F5 on the properties dialog of a User or Computer (RM206116) Under certain circumstances adding a new revision to a software package failed due to missing permissions (RM206125) When removing policy targets the confirmation message box to prevent unintentional deletion of such targets was not always shown (RM206486) If the IsPreInstalledCondition was empty for an already released software package, it could no longer be modified without creating a new revision (RM206506) If a user was deleted, but the same user still held a lock on a software package, details are now logged in the administration web service log file and the exception provides a conclusive error message (RM206730) The property "Write uninstallation info" is no longer used and has been removed (RM207322) The license shortage notification dialog is now only displayed for users with the DSM supervisor role (RM208192) Under certain circumstances the error message "Your schema information is old. Please restart the DSM Console!" was shown in the DSMC (RM208239) When creating a filter on LastLoggedOnUser, the dropdown list of all users was no longer sorted in alphabetical order (RM208463) Sometimes software packages could not be moved to another repository with "Access denied" (RM208757) The status of a policy instance was not always updated when pressing F5 on a computer object (RM209032) It only worked when the actual policy view below was refreshed via F5. DSMC crashed when trying to open a "nameless view" (RM209859) When using the DSMC_CustomBranding.ini and DSMC_CustomBranding.html in the SSI\HTML folder, and there was an empty entry defined in the custom views menu, clicking on this empty entry in the DSMC caused a crash. 30 The DSMC sometimes crashed when displaying the components of a Software Set or the distribution status of a software package (RM210333) Starting DSMC with /localncp failed if the ORG-Master depot was not reachable (RM210929) The Task "Show Distribution Status" failed when logged in user did not have read access to the queried depot(s) (RM211207) In rare scenarios the license warning dialog was shown even if there was a sufficient number of valid licenses (RM212118) When selecting the RunAs command in the packaging workbench and pressing F1, the wrong helpfile was opened (RM146606) A refresh issue after saving a package in the packaging workbench caused the installation parameters property area to appear empty (RM202305) Variables with invalid characters (e.g. 'ProgramFiles(x86)') were shown in the dialog 'Show All Variables'. (RM203097) Please note that in DSM the variable 'ProgramFilesDir' resolves to the 32 bit program files directory while 'ProgramFilesDir64' resolves to the 64 bit program files directory. When dragging files into the DeleteFileList eScript command dialog, the OK button used to stay disabled (RM203522) The display order of Installation Parameters in the packaging workbench was not properly saved (but remained 0) (RM204424) When the client side prerequisites of a package contained a "<" or ">", the task page of this package in the packaging workbench was empty (RM204939) After creating a new software package, the task page in the packaging workbench was empty (RM206628) Local installations (F7) and uninstallations (F8) now handle registry settings as if package was properly assigned (RM203595) A Local uninstallation (F8) is only possible, if a package is set to support uninstalls and all (if any) necessary uninstall information stored in the registry for the package is present. 31 Under certain circumstances the check during deletion of a property definition falsely reported that the property definition is still used even if that was not really the case (RM162225) DSM stopped working if a property group definition contained exactly 64 property definitions (RM211478) User with role "Client manager" did not have the right to execute the "Import Organization Directory" Task (RM99188) A user without role "Packaging Manager" could not import software packages (RM151521) An error sometimes occurred when viewing a client’s dynamic group memberships without supervisor rights (RM203600) Users without read permission on "Managed Users & Computers" always had performance issues working within the DSMC (RM203791) The deletion of an external group failed with a ForeignKeyViolation exception due to still existing role assignments (RM204231) Sometimes the SQL error "An expression services limit has been reached" was shown in the DSMC (RM205734) If a user did not have read permission on "Managed Users & Computers", the DSMC froze when trying to create a computer object in any subfolder (RM206509) Job log files now have aggregation enabled (RM202582) The logging level of Job log files can now be configured in the ExtendedLogFileSettings (registry). NiMoni crashed after updating to DSM 7.2.1 on Windows 7 x86 and x64 (RM204679) DSM stopped working with exception "Server had problem on startup!! Please call your administrator!" although there was actually just a connection issue with the database (RM207394) 32 FrontRange Operating System Deployment All values in the unattend.txt are now quoted so values with special characters are no longer an issue (RM106020) This change affects only newly created packages. Existing OS configuration packages can be changed by adapting the xslt contained in the package. Dynamically generated files in OSD are no longer limited to 32kb in size (RM138670) During an OS installation files were moved from a location where all users have write access to the Netinst directory and hereby kept the access rights from the previous location (RM167011) DSMC no longer crashes when importing a unattend.txt into an OSD configuration package (RM203935) The "OS installation" task and subsequent task for OSD were always offered even if the user did not have the right to execute them (RM204386) The combo box for OS selections is no longer disabled when creating an imaging setup file package and the wizard is now called from the OS Configuration Package wizard (RM204672) When trying to update a boot environment the following error occurred occasionally: "The property 'Id' must contain a positive value." (RM205019) When an OS configuration package was imported into another environment, the OS setup file package link could no longer be changed (RM208278) FrontRange Patch Management Patch policy instances were not updated to matching patch revisions if the vulnerability definition had changed in the new update catalog (RM156227) Vulnerabilities that did no longer exist on the client were not set to closed, if there were no corresponding patch policy instances (RM203603) 33 When patch policies were targeted to different dynamic groups, sometimes the policy instances were only created for the first dynamic group (RM204004) Even if this behavior was explicitly denied by the patch management configuration setting, additional software got installed after a patch installation already requested a reboot (RM205700) Under certain circumstances the clean-up of vulnerabilities via the Auxiliary Service failed (RM207397) It was not possible to change platform settings for Patch Management Execution Packages and Advanced Patch Management Execution Packages (RM207748) DSMC was crashing when using the context menu in the Patch Library if the Patch Management Licenses had expired (RM208565) Advanced Patch Management: The download failed for HTTP servers which did not respond to HEAD requests (RM203379) Advanced Patch Management: Downloading patches containing character sequences like %20 failed with error "The system cannot find the file specified" (RM204310) Advanced Patch Management: The Job policy "After successful OS installation" was not created automatically (RM204515) Advanced Patch Management: Some vulnerabilities were only listed with a GUID instead of the patch name (RM204878) Advanced Patch Management: Wrong patch file information was occasionally stored in patch packages if the download failed and no direct internet connection was used but the download was relayed via an internet proxy (RM205770) The error code returned by the HTTP proxy is now parsed properly and leads to a failed download which causes a retry during the next run of the APM service. Advanced Patch Management: A PMSync crashed during the download phase in case no open vulnerabilities existed in the system (RM206508) Advanced Patch Management: Under certain circumstances the patch installation failed on Vista clients with "access denied" (RM208759) 34 Advanced Patch Management: The unsupported patch classification 'Tools' was shown in the auto-approval wizard and in the patch library (RM209472) Advanced Patch Management: Download of patches failed with error "The system cannot find the file specified" if the download location itself was redirected (RM209868) The downloader now follows up to 10 redirections. Advanced Patch Management: The DSMC caused server exception errors or crashed when the root object 'All Products' was disabled in the product tree (RM210811) Standard Patch Deployment: A client could become unmanageable after importing a new patch catalog, if a deny policy existed for a previous patch catalog (RM156065) A client sync was not working during the patch catalog imports (RM203410) The Re-import of deleted patches was only possible with local administrative privileges (RM204202) The PmSync tried to update properties on already released patches during the download process which led to numerous server exceptions (RM208328) The Task "Download Patch Files" did not work when the patch package was already released (RM210598) Patch was not downloaded based on open vulnerabilities if the patch already had two revisions (RM210851) FrontRange Management Suite for Citrix When executing the task "Default Publishing Settings" on a computer, an error message appeared (RM203740) The question whether you also want to publish the application was missing when assigning a package with existing publishing settings to objects inside Citrix farms. Imaging After redeploying the client OS from an Image, the installation order was incorrect (RM167817) 35 Under certain circumstances an image restore could fail and the client would no longer be manageable (RM203345) The NiPrep command failed in case of disabled installation parameters (RM205780) When using NiPrep the image id was sometimes deleted too early from the system (RM209133) Virtualization The task "Perform Inventory" was missing in the context menu of an ESX- or Xen-object (RM205952) In some scenarios since DSM 7.2.1 it was no longer possible to create ThinApp applications (RM205100) DSM Web The dynamic group members were not updated correctly when changing computer properties via the DSM Web Console (RM203063) Under certain circumstances the depot view in the infrastructure monitoring failed to retrieve the status of a depot (RM207926) DSM Remote The connection to DSM Remote failed if the user, which tried to initiate the connection, did not have the right "display client computer" on its own computer object (RM163374) Discovery There was no possibility to change the Discovery Web URL within the NCP configuration (RM102516) In the "Client Status" tab of the DSMC the status for the Discovery client was not showing the actual Discovery client version (RM204907) 36 ITSM Integration When integrating DSM with ITSM SaaS, the "FrontRange DSM Messenger Service" sometimes did not work properly because it could not read the ICDB configuration (RM204727) Under certain circumstances the deactivation of a DSM Software Set via ITSM failed (RM206443) Activation of software sets in ITSM failed if a component of the set has parameters that are not changeable by assignment (RM212013) An installation parameter set to be not "changeable per assignment" could still be changed through the ITSM integration (RM212014) Migrate 7 The Migrate 7 Package "Backup All Users" failed with newer Migrate 7 versions due to a no longer supported command line option "/EXCLUDEUNUSED" (RM212233) Customers that have already imported this Migrate 7 package will have to manually adapt the package (create a new revision, mark the installation parameters as disabled and edit the script.inc). Business Logic Proxies The DSMC crashed when the BLP Server History Monitoring was opened the second time (RM201018) The deletion of a user-defined right has led to a broken BLS – BLP replication (RM202371) Under certain circumstances a roaming client got an exception when synchronizing against a BLP (RM203608) The creation of a new revision of a software package with a specified display name has led to a broken replication from BLS to BLP (RM204628) 37 A Bad Snapshot ID exception during client synchronization could occour due to a (slight) backlog in the client state info replication (BLP -> BLS) (RM206278) The SynchronizeProxy call to bring the BLP up-to-date now waits until the data from the BLP is fully replicated to the BLS. The creation of a new user favorite for a container (e.g. Domain, OU) has led to a broken replication from BLS to BLP (RM207267) In rare BLP scenarios the sync counter on the client (SyncCountClient) could get ahead of the one stored on the server and no sync would go through anymore (RM212299) 38 Known Issues in release 2013.2 This chapter informs you of known issues and errors that can occur in this DSM release. HEAT Remote Share my Screen (reversal of direction) does currently not work, this will be fixed with an update of the Remote Cloud in January 2014. Browser Plugin: To install the browser plugin for Firefox you will have to restart Firefox after the plugin installation for it to take effect. There is no browser plugin for Internet Explorer 11 yet, this should be fixed with a Remote Cloud update in December 2013. There is currently no browser plugin for Chrome 3, this should also be fixed with a Remote Cloud update in January 2014. Under certain circumstances a DSM Remote session runs into timeout when trying to logon to a client where nobody is logged in (RM203343) By increasing a timeout value it is possible to reduce the number of interruptions but connection failures can still occur. To change the timeout value set a custom parameter in DSM Remote Settings > DSM Remote Master: Userdefined options: Parameter name: ctot Value: 15000 (default), a value of 60000 has shown to lead to reduced connection problems. 39 USE OF THE SOFTWARE DESCRIBED IN THIS PAPER AND ITS RELATED USER DOCUMENTATION IS SUBJECT TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE APPLICABLE END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (EULA). The information contained in this document is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, FrontRange disclaims all warranties, either express or implied, including warranties for quality, accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement; and in no event shall FrontRange or its suppliers be liable for any damages whatsoever including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, loss of profits or data or special damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT (I) IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY; (II) DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, OF ANY KIND, OR EXTEND THE TERMS OF ANY EXISTING WARRANTY; AND (III) DOES NOT ALTER OR AMEND THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT UNDER WHICH FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS SOFTWARE PRODUCTS ARE LICENSED.
© Copyright 2026 Paperzz