Provisioning troubleshooting

Problems booting into WinPE

In Windows Vista, if the machine is configured to go into hibernation, it will have difficulty in booting into WinPE. If hiberfil.sys exists, WinPE will not boot.

To work around this, make sure that hibernation is turned off.

Download the location on the core

The provisioning templates on the Content server are downloaded to the \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\cache folder. Within that folder, additional folders are used to organize the templates.

Setting the level of logged provisioning status messages

The file LogLevel.ini controls the logging level used for various components in provisioning. It can be modified to fit the needs of your environment. You can set the level of logging to compile messages of a certain level and below. These levels are (in order from lowest to highest) ERROR, WARNING, INFO, VERBOSE, and DEBUG. The levels are additive, so a logging level of INFO will also display all ERROR and WARNING message. DEBUG displays all messages. Additional information can be found in the commented text of LogLevel.ini, which is located in the \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\log\provisioning folder.

How do I lock and unlock templates?

Any time you use a template not marked Public, an instance of that template is locked. The instance can't be deleted, but it can be hidden. You can't unlock an instance of a template. You must open the original template.

Troubleshooting – core

Template execution messages are stored in the provisioning.log file located in the \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\ldlogon\provisioning folder. You can view PXE representative deployment and prov_schedule log files in \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\log folder.

Troubleshooting – target

The tables below describes some useful files for troubleshooting.

WinPE

Folder\File	Description of file content
\ldprovision\launch.log	Provisioning loading status
\provision folder\ldprovision.log	Error messages and XML content
\ldprovision\output.txt	Application error messages only if the application hangs

LinuxPE

Use Alt+F2 to toggle to a terminal window.

Directory/File	Description of file content
var/log/messages	Errors loading LinuxPE
var/log/taskmaster.log	Errors loading provisioning
var/log/provisioning.log	Template errors and XML content

Windows target device

Folder/File	Description of file content
WinDir\Temp\ldProvision.log	Error messages and XML content
WinDir\Temp\run##.tmp	Template execution messages

Linux target device

Directory\File	Description of file content
/tmp/ldProvision.log	Error messages and XML content

Troubleshooting – PE manual execution

Load new console into PE and change to ldprovision folder x:\ldprovision – PXE, z:\ldprovision – Boot Media

Launch provisioning by executing ldprovision.exe

ldProvision command-line options:

Option	Explanation
-c	Core name or IP
-d	Debug
-f	Task XML file name
-h	Help
-m	Mode 1-3 (1=default)
-s	Run as daemon (Linux only)
-t	Download directory
-v	Version V # (1-255) Verbose logging

Example: ldprovision –c mycore –t x:\ldclient –V 255

OS manual execution

Windows

Using a target that has the ld agent installed, map a drive to or copy the contents of \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\ldlogon\provisioning\windows from the core to a local folder. Execute ldprovision as shown in PE manual execution above. Note that the log files are placed in windir/temp.

Linux

Using a target that has the ld agent installed, mount point to or copy the contents of \Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\ldlogon\provisioning\linux from the core to a local folder. Execute ldprovision as shown in PE manual execution above. Note that the log files are placed in var/log.

Tips on provisioning large numbers of devices

If you need to provision or re-provision a large (100+) number of devices, you may encounter slowdowns or timeouts in the downloading of the PE image from the PXE Representative, particularly the WinPE image. The actual OS imaging is not affected by provisioning, but is limited by the network capacity or ability to get the image file from depository server to client. For example, downloading a WinPE image to 14 clients from a single PXE Representative may require approximately 45 seconds. Using 14 clients, 0 to 3 clients would time out before they received an acknowledgement from the PXE Representative. These clients would then precede to the local boot. If the device was bare metal (No OS) they would reboot and PXE boot to the PXE Rep. Multicast clients would not remove the PXE Rep booting/downloading bottleneck.

If this occurs, try the following:

PXE boot groups of up to 10 devices at a time. If you want to PXE boot more than 10 clients at a time, you should increase the PXE boot retries/timeout.
Stagger the device groups at three-plus minute intervals. This will allow the PE image to be downloaded and the majority of the OS imaging to take place.
If you need to provision/image devices at a faster rate, add additional PXE Representatives as needed.

Even though the LinuxPE image is a third the size of WinPE, the PXE Representative still can't handle more than 10 simultaneous boot requests. If you stagger them by a couple of seconds they should all boot as expected, but if you start them all at once, some clients will not PXE boot. Generally the LinuxPE image will download twice as fast as WinPE.