Automated installs (very long)

[Gerald W. Carter]

Louis Mandelstam wrote:
> 
> 
> One problem I have with this setup is that there is a race condition -
> we assume the preexec script has completed by the time the Win95
> machine reaches that point in the logon script.   I plan to implement
> some kind of mechanism to cause the logon script to wait (or
> eventually time out) today.

I have some fairly long preexec scripts and have not had a problem with
this.  I thought Samba waited until the script was completed before
actually mounting the share.

The race condition I found was in the login script where the registry
script was imported.

> 
> Another problem is that you need to be sure that there actually is a
> profile for the user in the place you claim it to be, so I'll be 
> adding a check for that in the preexec which will copy a default
> profile into the standard location if there isn't one already.  This
> will also need to be covered by the race condition check.

Done this.  Does not seem to be a problem.

> Anyway, the result is that I never get a "first logon" message, and
> the user's registry is not kept on C: at all.  Right now, it will
> result in entries accumulating in ProfileList until the machine is
> re-installed, but that (a) is not a big problem for me as users don't
> roam very extensively here and (b) should be easy to fix either by
> using regedit's undocumented key delete command-line switch, or doing
> something in autoexec.bat similar to:
> 

Always love a new undocumented feature :)  What's the switch?  I assume
you are referring to real-mode editing.

As a side note...INF do not produce the annoying successful imported...
windows that popups when you import a script.  Or where you able to get
rid of this as well?



j-
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                          Gerald ( Jerry ) Carter	
Engineering Network Services                           Auburn University 
jerry at eng.auburn.edu             http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/cartegw

       "...a hundred billion castaways looking for a home."
                                  - Sting "Message in a Bottle" ( 1979 )
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