[wpkg-users] Wpkg Client issues in our environment

[Erik Langeland]

I have recently started using Wpkg to supplement Group Policy software distribution in our office. I would like to start off by saying a big thank you to everyone who has worked on this project. It is great to have an open-source alternative to the commercial software deployment servers.

In our environment, we have mostly Windows XP workstations within a Windows Server 2003 domain. W have been using Group Policy software distribution for about a year, so our users are accustomed to occasionally waiting for software to install when they boot, and I therefore set a long timeout period to ensure that software installations were done before the user could log in.

I had planned to use the Wpkg Client to run the Wpkg script so that they would have a similar experience with deployments through Wpkg, but i have run into a few issues. I am sharing my experiences and solutions here for the benefit of other users. I was using Wpkg Client 1.2.1 and Wpkg script version 1.0.2, which are the latest at the time of writing.

The first issue I discovered is that the Wpkg Client service, if it is set to Automatic start, would start while Group Policy software installations were still processing. I have also determined that in some cases, the service finishes before Windows enters wpkglogon.dll, which runs wpkgMessage.exe to display the dialog. If the service has already finished before the dialog displays, the dialog will not close until the timeout expires, unless the service is started a second time manually.

My first attempt to resolve this was to change the wpkg service to Manual start and using "sc start WpkgService" in a Group Policy startup script to run the service. Although this resolves the first problem, it dos not always resolve the second. The second problem also appears to be more acute on notebook PCs, since the service finishes very quickly when the computer is off the network.

Suggestion for the developers: Could the script be run from wpkglogon.dll or wpkgMessage.exe rather than using a service at all? If not, could one of those modules manually start the service?

After encountering these problems, I found out about grubi's different wpkgMessage.exe program <http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/2008-February/002630.html>. I am now using a Group Policy startup script to run that program and the wpkg script, and so far, I have not encountered any problems. One caution: I found that if my startup script launched wpkgMessage.exe directly, as in the post linked above, the startup script would hang - it never returned from launching wpkgMessage.exe. My startup script looks like this:

start \\network\path\wpkgmessage.exe
cscript.exe \\network\path\wpkg.js /synchronize /quiet /nonotify
\\network\path\wpkgmessage.exe -terminate

grubi's dialog has the significant advantage of being able to tell the user what the script is actually doing as it processes each package, and I appreciate that all of the text in the dialog can be set using the ini file. I have customized the upgrade message to display only the string passed on the command line. I use this in conjunction with the install and remove messages to let me change the message when the script starts processing packages, when it completes each installation, and when it is finishing. This way, if it ever gets hung up, I have a better idea of where it was in the process.

Erik Langeland
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada