[wpkg-users] WPKG - possibly stupid questions

[Peter Gough]

I'm trying to get my head around the best way to implement WPKG in our
environment but am struggling to work out the most appropriate options.
We're running Windows Server 2003 with Active Directory and Windows XP SP3
on workstations.

I have created a share, granted read-only permissions to my 'wpkg-user'
account, copied the server files into it, created some subfolders for my
packages and updated the hosts.xml, packages.xml and profiles.xml files as
described in the wiki.

I have also installed wpkg-client on a single workstation, configured it to
point to this share and exported my settings.xml file to the same share as
the other server files.

As I understand it I can now do the following:

1, push the client application to my workstations using psexec. If I do this
then the workstations would run the wpkg service, access the share, check
their status against the hosts.xml file to see if they are in any profile
groups and would then install packages as required. Once each client
connects (at startup?) they would write a local wpkg.xml file to
%system%\system32.

2, as above but use Group Policy to deliver the client to workstations,
however I can't work out how to apply the install switches as described in
the documentation. I've tried using GP to run a script with the full command
line but when I try to do this I get an error that the package is invalid.

3, use a GP script to run *'cscript \\server\path\to\WPKG\wpkg.js
/synchronize /quiet /nonotify' *or the wpkg-start.bat file at startup. Doing
this would mean that I don't need to install the client but the downside is
that I don't seem to get any wpkg dialog boxes when Windows starts - all the
user sees is the generic 'running startup scripts' message from GP and given
that some of the installs take a while this might lead some users to restart
their machines thinking they have hung. I also can't get this to work unless
I give 'authenticated users' permissions to read the shared folders which
means that there doesn't seem to be any benefit to setting up the wpkg-user
account.

Can somebody who has done this let me know what the benefits would be in
using the client install over option 3. If there are some tangible benefits
then can you let me know if it is possible to install the client using GP.
If option 3 is preferred for my environment then can somebody point me
towards how I might go about solving my missing dialog box issue and whether
there are any other issues I need to think about prior to implementation.

Many thanks in advance,

Pete
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