[wpkg-users] Wifi-Only Clients & Software Deployment

[Dave Evans]

On 15/12/2016 14:11, Paul McGrath wrote:
> Hi Holger,
>    Even for our wired connections we have the WPKG Service running in 'Automatic (delayed start)' so it doesn't run until a couple of minutes after the client has made a connection usually via logon.
> Paul
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wpkg-users [mailto:wpkg-users-bounces at lists.wpkg.org] On Behalf Of Holger Kröber
> Sent: 15 December 2016 13:42
> To: wpkg-users at lists.wpkg.org
> Subject: [wpkg-users] Wifi-Only Clients & Software Deployment
>
> Hi,
>
> more and more clients in our environment no longer have a LAN cable plugged in regularly.
> Most of the time, they have a wifi connection. This has some side effects for software deployment with WPKG.
> WPKG is executed in the context of the system account trough Group Policy startup scripts (Active Directory), before user login.
> But this will only work, if the client already has established a connection to the LAN at this time.
> With WIFI, the connection is established after the user has logged in - this is too late :)
>
> How do you manage this in your environment?
> Do you use tasks that run in the system context after the user has logged in and are executed as soon as the WIFI connection is established?
> How do you avoid conflicts (user tries to execute the program that you want to upgrade right in the middle of the installation process etc.).
> How do you give the user feedback about the installation process? If you install software in the system context, the user normally won´t see any messages because of session 0 isolation.
>
> Thanks,
> Holger

We've set something up for our roaming users where wpkg runs off a local 
copy of the wpkg folder.
so at startup, wpkg runs and processes any updates
then after wpkg is finished (it could be a wpkg package but we didn't do 
it that way) another process runs which rsyncs the latest copies of the 
updates from the central server.
the downside is that the client needs to have a local copy of all 
packages (is about 1GB at present) and this feels to me like an ugly 
kludge, but at less than 1% of the hard drive size it's not worth 
investing time to make it cleaner.
the upside is that wpkg runs OK, before the user starts their work (as 
it should), and then if the rsync fails, we can try again in the 
background later.
this works for offsite laptops, and would work for your wifi connected 
users.

Dave