Dwarfsoft [GPA]

It has again been some time since my last update. I have been quite busy getting used to balancing my new life with my daughter now nearly 3 months old. Fatherhood has obviously taken a lot of my time that I previously used for development, and learning.

The past few months have also seen my University Graduation 3 days after my Daughters Birth, Family Visits, Job Applications, Job Interviews, and finally Permanency in my Servers Position.

Aside from that I have been working with some friends on converting the old TA Server to the C# .Net/Python version (PyTA). I have also been busy in mapping out my development goals and objectives for the coming months and years.

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Before I jump in to the fun that is the Scripting that I have been wading through this past week, I thought I’d let all of those who may care that I finally have some kind of certification. I passed Microsoft exams 70-291 and 70-284. So I am now the proud holder of a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator Messaging Specialist certification (MCSA Messaging). Now I am concentrating on the final three exams so that I can get my MCSE.

After a rather hectic week of scripting a solution and then distributing it under an excessively short deadline, I have been asked to provide stats on the result of forcing this solution out to clients. The solution that I had to develop keeps tabs on a System Volume Image of PCs, and ensures that this Image never gets out of date too far. Currently I am not forcing a Store every restart, as the planned solution was to do, but I do inform the client that their current Image is out of date and ask them if they want to do a Store now. If they click on Yes then their PC is rebooted and the Store is done (providing that one of many flaws in the current Store process do not interrupt the process). (continue reading…)

Since my last post I came to the realisation that I really didn’t like the way that the Diskpart box popped up on screen during the function call, so I did what I said I should have done and created the function the other way. This also cleans up the text files after completion, which is something the previous function didn’t do.

For completeness I also made the function a little more generic, so it takes the Volume Label as the Variable, and falls back to “IMAGE” if none was passed.

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I have spent the last few days creating a few MSI packages and fixing some pre-existing MSI packages. One issue that I found with working on an MSI that installs files to a Hidden partition is that InstallShield has very little in the way of control over partitions, mountpoints and the like. This was not really an issue, as I am using a SOE and can Mount Volumes through VBScript.

The one issue that we had with mounting this specific Volume is that if a USB Drive or a Virtual CD/DVD drive is installed on the machine, it modifies the volume numbering scheme. The volume we were previously attempting to mount was Volume 3. This became Volume 4 in the even that another drive was connected, or a higher number depending on how the USB drive was partitioned.

Not a grand issue, but one that was overlooked by the Corporate boys when they released one of their imaging tools (the hidden volume is the Image volume). I modified their install script to use a bit more smarts when attempting to find the volume it needs. (continue reading…)

I haven’t updated you all for a while, but in that time I have completed Microsoft exam 70-290. This ended up being quite a lot simpler than I had originally anticipated. I am currently studying for two more exams. 70-291, which is Microsoft Windows 2003 Networking, and 70-284, which is Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 configuration. I have been attempting the practice exams and reading the MSPress books, and am relatively confident.

I have scheduled both of these exams for the same day, which will make the day a very long one. If I manage to pass both then that will give me MCSA: Messaging Specialist status. I can then focus on the remaining 3 exams to get my full MCSE certification.

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