[wpkg-users] Re : Re : Question about multi-domain environment

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Karl,

Karl wrote:
> No please no more microsoft tools
> 
> Is this possible with WPKG?

Well, I think you can - but you did not exactly specify what you want to 
do. Your question about multi-domain environment does not really apply 
to WPKG as WPKG does not care about domains (except for accessing user 
accounts).

You might also use a centralized software repository (or synchronized 
software repository) and then just assign your profiles to the clients.

Here is a short description how I use it:

I use WPKG on multiple, completely independent, Windows domains as well 
(all served with Samba, but this is irrelevant).

On my "master" domain I create a share and put it on a server which is 
available to the clients under the name 'software'. So all clients on my 
"master" domain access WPKG on \\software\RemInst\wpkg\wpkg.js.

All the software is stored at \\server\RemInst\software\...
"\\software\RemInst\software" is referred as %SOFTWARE% (see WPKG 
variable definition)

To distinguish between hosts on different sites I prefixed them all 
according to the site. At installation you can use winnt.sif to to 
achieve hostname prefixes. Just specivy "ComputerName = *" and "OrgName 
= site1" - so all host will be named like "site1-<someRandomValue>".

Then I created host specifications like "site1-.*" and assigned profiles 
to them like "site1-default".
To make it even easier you might create a profile called something like 
"global-profile" and then add it to the dependencies of "siete1-default" 
- so most of the packages (which are globally the same) do not need to 
be added to each profile, just keep them in the global one.


So now here the clue comes...
I use rsync (well, on Windows there might be similar tools - or use 
cygwin) to synchronize WPKG and the software share to remote sites.

On all remote sites the software deployment server is called 'software' 
so the \\software\RemInst\... paths are valid on all the sites. I do not 
need to prepare custom packages for each site. Even if the server name 
would be different you can just define another path for the %SOFTWARE% 
variable.

This setup allows me to update multiple sites with a simple rsync command.

HTH
Rainer