Rhyous

Support Tools for LDMS 9.5 Released

Go here for more information:

LANDesk Support Tools

I work for LANDesk, in case you have forgotten, and I have this LANDesk add-on called LANDesk Support Tools.

So I couldn’t figure out why my Send Message command in my LANDesk Support Tools wouldn’t work in 64 bit. It kept saying that msg.exe wasn’t on the remote client. Of course, I checked and it was right there in c:\windows\system32\msg.exe.

However, I was able to spend some more time on this and it turns out that if a 32 bit application (such as the LANDesk agent) goes to work, an executable that only exists in 64 bit form, such as msg.exe, is not exactly “visible” to the 32 bit application.

So I have to call it using c:\windows\sysnative\msg.exe. Now I just have to figure out how best to implement this difference in my LANDesk Support Tools so the command works for both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 7.

I wrote a front-end to LDPing last week-end. You can check it out here:

LDPing

So I was writing a WPF front-end for LDPing, which is a method of querying a LANDesk Agent for its computer name and Inventory Id. There is a button that you click to launch the ping and I couldn’t get the thing to enable…Anyway, I figured it out and posted the resolution here:

Refreshing a button enabled/disabled by RelayCommand.CanExecute()

So here is a screen shot of LDPing.

Hey all,

It has been a while again and again there are good reasons for this.

If you find something not working, please let me know.

Version: 9.0.0.7
( 9.0.0.x Matches our current release of LDMS, though this is not really version dependent.)

Release Notes
===============

1. Compiled using LDMS 9.
2. Changed the OSType xml object to search for the value as an exact match and as a contains. (This resolve an issue where in 9.0 Windows Workstations just say Workstation and Windows Servers just say Server, but 8.8 agents might scan in and say XP Workstation, 2008 Server, so by just putting “Workstation, Server” all windows machines should be obtained.)
3. Added a trick to handle the different the patch to the LDClient directory, which is now much more necessary since %ProgramFiles% doesn’t point to “c:\program files (X86)” on 64 bit machines. (I use this: %LDMS_LOCAL_DIR%\..\)

WARNING: This version is not tested on 8.8 and it is recommend you continue with version beta 6 for 8.8 and only use this version for LDMS 9.

Latest Version:

LANDesk Support Tools beta 7a.exe

Previous Version for LDMS 8.8

LANDesk Support Tools beta 6.exe

Hey all,

It has been a while and there are good reasons for this.

First, I have been working too hard both at work and at home.  I stripped, sanded, and stained my deck with a lot of help from my brother in law.  Never-the-less I have continued this project.

A lot of the DLL file I was using was coded a long time ago by someone else and it was mostly procedural code (even though it was C#), and I rewrote it with a bit more oject oriented-ness. Hopefully, this will make it easy to maintain in the future, not to mention the fact that I am now no longer using functions that I don’t know what they do, cause now I wrote them.

Anyway, here are some of the new enhancements.  They aren’t amazing, because it is the same thing rewritten.  If you find something not working, please let me know.

Release Notes
===============

Version 8.80.3.6
===================
1. Mostly rewrote the SupportTools.dll
    a. Now the SupportTools.xml can be updated and the changes are seen in the console immediately without restarting.
    b. It is now using OS Type instead of OS Name for a filter.
    c. Filtered OS Types no longer show the option disabled, the option is now removed and I didn’t leave in the grayed out option.
    d. Only remote executes check for Remote Control rights, instead of everything checking for those rights.
    e. I slightly altered the XML format.
    f. Moved the SupportTools.xml file to the SupportTools directory.

    g. The Support Tools now are listed in the order placed in the XML, and not automatically sorted, so if you want to change the order you can.
2. Slightly enhanced who.vbs to not crash, but instead give a friendly error for disconnected devices.

3. Added a few options that weren’t there before.

4. Fixed typos in the XML.

5. Added RemoteRegistry.exe (an autoit script recommended to me by user Rich Sterling from community.landesk.com.  Thanks Rich.)

I know most won’t see much difference because they are already using most of the tools in this build.  But there were great strides made that will allow me to now start developing more tools that talk to the agents using LANDesk not RPC, so yeah!

As always you can get the latest link here:

Console Add-on: LANDesk Support Tools

I will keep both versions available for download for now.

I expect my new DLL to be more stable, more rebust, and overwall better.  However, being newly rewritten there is always the chance of an unforseen bug on someone elses system so I am leaving beta 5 downloadable as well.

Latest Version:

LANDesk Support Tools beta 6.exe

Previous Version

LANDesk Support Tools beta 5.exe