MDT Deployment links

Below are some of the links that I have used over the last few years to build up the MDT environment.

Deployment Fundamentals (book)

DeploymentCD – Step by step guides and tutorials

MDT links:
http://www.deployvista.com/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/benhunter/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/

Sample Windows XP Sysprep file (resolves 0x0000007b errors)

Hardware lookup by vendor and device code (useful for troubleshooting device drivers on unidentified hardware):
http://www.pcidatabase.com

Application silent install switches:
http://www.appdeploy.com

MDT Lenovo Custom Model Example

http://smulpuru.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/mdt-custom-variable-for-lenovo-model-drivergroup/

Blog post provides a customized ZTIGather.wsf file that will generate human useable names for Lenovo model PCs. A very useful capability for any shops that utilize any Lenovo systems...

Fedora 14 USB media (Built in Fedora)

Download Fedora installation media

Install Live USB Creator application:yum -y install livecd-tools

Plug in USB flash drive

Run livecd-iso-to-disk to copy the ISO to USB flash drive: livecd-iso-to-disk /path/to/image.iso /dev/sdb1 (Change the drive as necessary)

Kickstart Configurator Fedora 14 installs!

Install the Kickstart Configurator on a Fedora 14 install
yum install system-config-kickstart

Once installed, run Kickstart Configurator
/usr/sbin/system-config/kickstart

Used instructions/documentation found here: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/ch-redhat-config-kickstart.html

Earth day 2011!

Three monitors, five printers, one scanner, one pc, and a battery backup.  All kept out of the landfill!

Manually create Windows 7 USB boot media

Steps to create your own Windows 7 USB boot media.

1) Open a command prompt with admin privileges.
2) Type diskpart
3) Type “list disk”
4) Locate the entry that corresponds with your USB thumb drive, and type “select disk ”
5) Type “clean”. This will wipe the partition.
6) Type “create partition primary”
7) Type “select partition 1″
8) Type “format fs=ntfs quick”.
9) Type “active”.
10) Type “assign”.
11) Type “exit”, then close the command prompt.
12) Open the ISO file in 7-zip. Extract the contents to your thumbdrive.
13) Remove and boot.

Borrowed this from the comments made by thirdwheel in the following blog post: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/install-windows-7-from-usb-drive-requires-2-simple-steps/

Giving up on Dell Mini 1010

The Dell Mini 1010 is a decent little netbook, but the GMA500 chipset really kills the idea of using Linux on this thing. Linux is a great OS, and something I will probably look into running on a 'home server' PC again in the near future. Its been great to learn, and I am glad to be armed with new knowledge of an OS, however, Windows support is where my career will grow.

So Linux on the Mini 1010 is done, it will get its previous Win7 backup restored soon. In the meantime, I intend to finish my Linux course and begin working on learning VB.Net and/or C# programming in order to facilitate building packages for PC deployments.

To the Cloud!

With the release of Amazon MP3 cloud service this week, I've moved most of my favorite tracks to the cloud! Similarly, purchased storage from Google to store our photographs. Finally completed uploading pictures through Picasa. So gradually moving important or useful data to the could.

As a consumer, both of these services are useful. Photos can easily be shared with far off friends and family. The Amazon MP3 service streams to Android and web browsers, so music can be made available virtually anywhere!

This may make moving to a Linux platform full-time much easier.

Goal: Console gaming transition 2011

Recall back to January, one of the goals for 2011 is to transition to console gaming and away from PC gaming. There are several benefits:

Used games are considerably cheaper than brand new games. This serves to stretch the gaming dollar much further than brand new PC games. Console games can be traded in much easier than PC games.

PC parts usually need an upgrade every couple of years to be able to play the latest games with the best results. Console gaming will remove the desire to keep pace on upgrades to the PC, resulting in another rather considerable savings.

With baby #2 on the way, the need to be able to pause or walk away is important. This is not ideal on games that have a large amount of persistence or the action cannot be paused. Console titles generally are much easier to start-up quickly and walk away or pause.

Transitioning to the console will allow me to install Linux on the workstation PC without missing Windows gaming. Continuing to learn Linux, programming, shell scripting, etc. is more beneficial from a career perspective.

So there's one of the 2011 goals making progress. There may be a page on this blog dedicated to the game or games that I may be playing through. Mostly for my own enjoyment, but there may be some fun game moments, tips or tricks that I can share!

http://gamercard.xbox.com/vendrath.card

Install Virtualbox Additions in CentOS 5.5

Ran into a problem loading the VirtualBox Additions tonight, thanks to Google, found Todd's blog post about the same here: http://blog.geekliketodd.com/archives/734

The step that did the trick was this:
sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Received some errors just trying to ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, but running it as a shell script made all the difference!

Windows 7 SP1

So far, not so good. Applied successfully to my Windows 7x 64 PC at work. Applying to a VM, not so successful. Has not been able to install from Windows Update, even. Very dissapointing, as I wanted to deploy a fresh Windows 7 SP1 image to my netbook when the SSD arrives.

Fedora 14 Synaptic touchpad settings

After having a heck of a time using the mouse touchpad without the tap-click and multitouch scroll functions stumbled across a very simple solution!

In Gnome, click System -> Preferences -> Mouse -> Touchpad tab
Check "Enable mouse clicks with touchpad" and two finger scrolling.

Poulsbo Display driver Dell Mini 10

After adding the RPM Fusion repositories, install the Poulsbo driver by running this command:

yum install xorg-x11-drv-psb

After installing the driver, edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. These settings worked on the Dell Mini 10:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "psb"
Option "IgnoreACPI"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 1024 600
EndSubsection
EndSection

After rebooting the PC the display took a bit longer than usual to load X.

Fedora 14 - Broadcom BCM4312 (Dell Mini 10)

Broadcom BCM4312 driver for Fedora 14 on Dell Mini 10.

Updated with new instructions below

Add the rpmfusion repositories.

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Install the driver.

yum install kmod-wl

Reboot.


Alternatively use yum install akmod-wl

RAID 0: The importance of backup and restore

Once again RAID0 strikes. Somehow both of the HDDs that were configured in RAID0 managed to maintain some kind of configuration information from the RAID. Attempted to dual boot Windows 7 and CentOS 5 for the linux course. CentOS did not see my pair of 640GB WD HDDs, instead it saw some kind of RAID config. Took quite a bit of work to discover that the drives still contained a RAID configuration, even though the controllers were set to AHCI in BIOS.

After removing the RAID configuration from both drives my Widows drive no longer booted properly.
I backed up before I started messing with it, but its going to take time to restore. Thanks again, Acronis! Another opportunity to learn and hopefully not have lost anything.

Let this be a lesson, though. RAID0 is a decent performance boost, but in my oppinion is not worth the risks in data loss. Be dilligent and back your data up, even if you do not use a RAID array.

2011 goal: Xbox 360 gaming

PC gaming has been a fun hobby for many years. Putting together and then upgrading the mid-range rig has occupied much of my time and not an insignificant amount of funding. 2011 brings many new challenges. We are expecting an addition to our family, looking to buy a house early in the year, and I am attempting to complete my AAS degree program.

With all of this activity, it means shifting to a more economical and goal-oriented gaming strategy. I own a half dozen games that I've not played through, or may enjoy playing through again, so playing through those before perhaps trading them in for something new is one of the sub-goals here.

Starcraft 2 will definately continue to be a PC gaming favorite, though I will have to depart the World of Warcraft time sink.

Steps required for success:

Add Xbox 360 to my desk/gaming setup.

Complete World of Warcraft: Cataclysm goals and freeze account

Organize the half dozen games to finish playing through

Agree on gaming time with family

Get stuff done before gaming

That's one goal for 2011 out there for the world to see. Will try to post a couple more this week (another goal?!?) and track progress through the year.

-Brock