The RESguru PowerBlog! » Technote

New Technote: Global Authorized Files Cleanup!

RESguru — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:08:12 +0000

From the spring cleaning dept. Ever got frustrated with having a Global Authorized File list which is a mile long? Been wanting to break down your appguard and read-only blanketing security into more manageable chunks? Then this article is for you. It will show you a very slick way of organizing security authorizations using blank/empty applications as placeholders and how you can easily move security settings inbetween them. Note the moving is a PowerFuse 2010 feature.

The article contains a nice buildingblock for you to try out also.

Click here to view the RG026 article.

New technote: Control Panel applets for PowerFuse

RESguru — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:42:11 +0000

From the we-work-harder-so-you-don’t-have-to dept. As an administrator or integrator, you may often find yourself in the situation you need to offer certain Controlpanel applets to the users. Unfortunatly PowerFuse doesn’t (yet) offer the ability to import Control Panels as easily as it does regular applications.

To address this, I’ve created a set of buildingblocks which includes every single applet to be found in the standard Windows XP and Windows 7 control panels. On top of that there’s a set of Extras which includes some other nice control panel applets often found. Have a look at what’s inside below: (click to enlarge).

Click here to view the article and download buildingblocks.

Cleaning out the Wisdom agent completely

RESguru — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:20:56 +0000

Here’s a bit of info which may come in handy for those of you who spend a lot of time cloning machines and contemplating using Wisdom to manage the clones. As you may know, there are 3 methods in RES Wisdom for identifying the agent:

Using the WUID option
The MAC address of the first NIC and
3) a combo of the computername and domain name.

In an environment where cloning is performed, using option 1 is not recommended as it may lead you to agents disapearing from the Wisdom console. This is due to the fact that the WUID is written into the HKLM portion of the registry, hence it will be part of the image. This is why we usually recommend either using MAC address or domain+computername as the Agent identification method here

When you uninstall the Wisdom Agent, it’s a quite clean operation. However the WUID value will remain on the target machine when you uninstall it. Although this is per design, it may have some unforseen consequences if you are in the middle of building your clone template. Hence it would be nice to know what to clean out in order to forget the Wisdom agent has ever touched a machine.

The registry keys you are looking for are:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\RES\Wisdom\Preferences\WUID
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WUID\Default

If you need to clean out the Wisdom agent completely, make sure you delete both the WUID keys.

New Technote: Secrets of PWRGATE.EXE

RESguru — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:00:45 +0000

A new article has been posted in the Technote Library. The subject is an obscure little executable, called PWRGATE.EXE, which is part of PowerFuse. In the 2010 release, you are able to do many interesting things with this program, such as launching many of the PowerFuse components directly. You are now also able to lauch the User Installed Applications (formerly known as Partially Managed Workstations) wizard directly, so users don’t have to go through the old PowerPanel. Of course they are still able to do that if enabled, that is. As a part of this article, I have created buildingblocks which you can import into your own environment to get access to these apps.

Click here to view the article.

Manage multiple config sets for 1 app!

RESguru — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:48:35 +0000

Another technote has been published in the Technote Library. This one will teach you how to configure PowerFuse to prompt users for settings when they launch an application. This is extremely usefull for prod/test/dev scenarios, where you would like to avoid having multiple definitions of the same application to maintain. The whole thing revolves about the usage of workspace containers, so if you’ve been dodging learing what workspace containers are about, with the release of PowerFuse 2010 it ‘s a good time to grab the bull by it’s horns. If you still feel a bit in the dark about what Workspace containers are and what they can be used for, have a look at this other article, which is a work in progress as we’re constantly adding new uses for these objects.

The new article, called RG023 Managing multiple config sets for one app, also describes how to use the new Registry Tracer feature in PowerFuse 2010.

Click here to read the full article

PRINTERS.LST – The forgotten feature

RESguru — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:26:23 +0000

From the Technotes-R-Us Dept. A new technote RG022 has been submitted to the library. This time the topic is a special file, which actually has been with us for several years, the PRINTER.LST file. What it does is allow you to completely independently of existing printerserver naming conventions, to build a tree of well known geographical or physical locations to which the users actually can relate, when selecting a printer with Printing Preferences (formerly known as PowerPrint). The end result can look like this example, I’ve created here on the right.

Go read the full article here.

Bye-Bye SetShell!

RESguru — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:54:29 +0000

From the thank-god-for-small-favors dept. One of the really cool things that RES Software has put into PowerFuse 2010, is the ability to centrally toggle PowerFuse on/off, on the target machines. This is a huge advantage from using the old Setshell stand-alone utility, as you can do it on more than one computer at a time. The only other way to do this currently is utilizing the Set Shell task of RES Wisdom.

This new feature of PowerFuse 2010 is evident when you it on a target computer for the first time. Here you will get a (somewhat) interesting question, wheather you want to launch the Workspace Composer automatically or manually. What the installer is asking you (in the oldschool terminology) is “Do you want to set PowerFuse as the Shell now?”. The dialog box looks like this:

So what’s this deal with a Workspace Composer, you may ask? Well, it’s new branding for the Workspace Manager (pfwsmgr.exe) I don’t believe the process name itself has changed though. So just to make sure we are all on the same page, let’s get the terminology straight:

Automatic = Set the value of HKLM\…\Winlogon\Shell to pwrstart.exe, i.e. start a Powerfuse session at logon.

Manual = Set the value of HKLM\…\Winlogon\Shell to explorer.exe, i.e. don’t start PowerFuse

Out of the box, the value for the installer is manual. The overall idea is for you to be able to dunk PowerFuse into an existing environment, and then centrally switch PowerFuse on across the estate in the tempo you’re comfortable with. Note: When installing RES PowerFuse unattended using a command line, it is now possible to apply the public property AUTORUNCOMPOSER. I presume you set it = YES, but I will have to check.

So great, we can set the shell uppon install, but what about later in the console? That’s also possible. In order to use this, do the following.

Start the PowerFuse console and navigate to Setup|Agents
Select one or more agents and rightclick on them
In the context menu, go to Run Workspace Composer and select Automatic or Manual.

Let’s say you’ve changed an agent to Manual, thereby disabeling PowerFuse. When you’ve changed the setting, the status in the Run Workspace Composer column for the agent, will change to Manual (pending). This means that the agent has not yet picked up the configuration change. The agent will check for the status of the shell in the database and then in turn write the new shell value to the registry locally. This should however happen as quickly as any normal configuration change. You can hit F5 in the agent view at any time to update the status.

New technote: PowerFuse in the Cloud!

RESguru — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00:45 +0000

From the Technotes-R-Us dept. With the imminent release of PowerFuse 2010, here is an interesting tidbit for you. PowerFuse 2010 supports Microsoft SQL Azure cloud databases! You would be well in your right to have a few questions you would want answered, such as:

What the heck is Azure?
Why would I want to consider that?
What does it do for PowerFuse?
What would all this cost me then? Are there any savings?
Right, so how do I setup the darn thing then?

All these questions and more, are adressed in a brand-spankin’ new Technote RG021, which is available for your reading enjoyment in the library.

Click here to read the full article

Cache This! (Technote)

RESguru — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:23:52 +0000

Here’s a solution to an annoying little problem which has been bugging more than a few people out there recently. This was originally posted in the Guru’s Forum but it seemed to make sense to make an article out of it. Here’s the skinny: You’ve just installed PowerFuse 2008 for the first time and everything seems hunky-dory in the console. Then you try to log into a session as a user and get this little number (click it to enlarge):

Click here to read the full article.

New technote: Preventing access to Admin shares

RESguru — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:36:24 +0000

Here’s a tech-tip straight off the press. You might find yourself in the situation that you need to permit users to have the right to browse UNC paths on the network. This may be the case if you have users with elevated priveledges, such as users who are local administrators and are allowed to install software using the Partially Managed Workstation feature of PowerFuse.

Click here to read the new article RG019 on this subject

Thanks to Scott Taylor and Roy Woods at Fujitsu Services, UK. You guys rock!