ZCM and the "Open File - Security Warning"

I kept building my ZCM (ZENworks Configuration Management) bundles to launch executables off of network shares and I kept finding that my apps either wouldn't ever run or I'd get the "Open File - Security Warning" box complaining that the file might not be safe.  Here's what that error looks like if you're not sure if you're seeing the same thing.

What I figured out was that when the bundle just ran and ran forever but never actually did anything, it must have opened this window in the Dynamic User's context and not the current user's context.  So it was sitting there waiting for someone to click Run, but no one could see it to click on it.  I could however reliably launch one application and while it was running and not doing anything, I could launch another application and it would give me the above message and I could click Run and it would go about it's business and launch.  

I don't want to train my users to click Run on random security warning boxes so I don't like leaving it up to them to click on it.  Also, since it only comes up part of the time it's not even a reliable fix.  So I went looking around for a better way.

I came across Joe Parsons post here about this same error and SCCM.  He references a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about the error and a way to get around it when running VBscripts.  That doesn't make a direct application for us in ZCM, but it puts us on the right track. 

To fix the problem we just need to add the mentioned SEE_MASK_NOZONECHECKS variable to the environment on the computer.  Easiest way to do that is in the bundle itself, just modify the "Launch Action" to add the variable and set it equal to 1.  Here's what it looks like when you've got it in there.

A week, er..... a month with Cacti

This post started out as a "one week after" post but now it's been almost a month. You can see my posts about that here for part 1 and here for part 2. I thought I would share the lessons that I've learned now that it's been up a week month and I actually have some data in it to chart.

Just a little background in case you missed my earlier posts. My reason behind setting Cacti up was to be able to monitor the utilization of our WAN links.  We weren't having any problems with them, but we wanted a little visibility into how much traffic they were passing.

After Cacti was setup, I just had to add devices and charts in place.  That work flow for that went like this:
Console > Device > Add > insert Description, insert IP address, pick host template, enter SNMP info > Create
Rinse and repeat.  There wasn't much variety here, just plugging in IP's and making the connections.

That gets all the devices in there, now I just had to add some charts. That went like this:
Console > Device > pick a device > Create Graphs for this Host > check an Interface > select an Graph type > Create
I learned a couple of lessons on this step.  One was that I like the graph output of "In/Out Bits with Total Bandwidth".  I tried out some of the other ones, but I settled on that one.  The other lesson I learned was pick the actual interface, not the virtual interface on switches.  I initially picked the virtual interface and couldn't figure out where the traffic was.  Easy fix, just pick the physical interfaces instead.  That wasn't too bad, I just had to look up which ports connected to the WAN.

So total time invested is only a couple of hours.  The majority of that time was spent in 5-10 minutes at a time making adjustments and then checking back on it an hour or so later to see what it looked it.

I've also made a couple of tweaks to the graph templates to make it easy to scan down the list and compare traffic, but I'll cover those in another post, so stay tuned.

Google Play for Education has arrived!

Google Play for Education!

It has been a good two weeks for tablets in the education market.  First Apple announces the new managed distribution model for app deployment on iPads (here's my post about that) and now this announcement from Google.

Google Play for Education is a selection of apps, videos, and books all selected by teachers and grouped by age, course, and even common core standard.  This will be a great boon for educators all over.  Having an app store were at least some semblance of oversight has been given and it's not like the wild west where anything goes.

Google has even realized that schools aren't like individuals and with access to credit cards and that the majority of our purchases have to be made with POs.  Now we've got access to curated content and the ability to actually pay for it.

I can't wait to get a chance to actually get my hands on this and try it out.

Finally... Managed Distribution from Apple

I had heard rumors about a feature in iOS 7 that would allow for "pulling back" applications.  In essence, I can assign an app to an iPad when a student gets enrolled in a class and then I can pull the app back when they move on and no longer need the app.  This would greatly ease our app management pains.  As it stands now, we have to be extremely careful about application deployment.  It's very tedious to make sure the correct iTunes account is logged into an iPad when we use a VPP redemption code.  If we're not careful, we can "give away" our redemption codes since they follow the iTunes account and not the device.  But that's all going to change now.

Apple now has added a "managed distribution" mechanism to iOS to allow the apps to be assigned to devices, and most importantly, unassigned from devices.  How did this not make major headlines when it was unveiled?  This is a major problem that we have faced with iOS devices and on the surface it looks to be the feature that we've always wanted.  I haven't actually had a chance to play with it yet, and the only thing I've read about it comes from this this Apple support page.  But so far, wow!  It's about time.

I've just done a bit more searching about this feature and it looks like there are a couple of sites with a few more notes about it.  It looks like enterprise iOS picked it up first with this article.

One downside that I do see is that it doesn't work for books.  But that's OK. I'll happily take what I can get*.

*This isn't happily because Apple is great and wonderful and I'll love anything that comes from them.  It's happily because this problem has been a real pain and with the number of iPads showing up increasing every day we'll take anything to help make management easier.

Silently Installing Audacity and LAME

Want to silently install Audacity and LAME?

Audacity

I learned my lesson in my previous adventures looking for silent install switches for iPrint (here's that post Removing iPrint Printers).  This time I started out running audacity-win-2.0.5.exe /? to see if there are any silent install options.  What do you know, there are. The "/SILENT" option looks promising for my needs.  I think I'll go ahead and add the "/CLOSEAPPLICATIONS" option in there too just so I don't get any pesky, "You need to reboot" messages.  I'm also going to go ahead and add the "/LOG" option too.  In the past I always skipped logging stuff just to make things faster, but as of late I've decided that having some log data lying around can come in handy and is worth the extra second it takes.

LAME

Unfortunately, the learned lesson with the "/?" is lost on LAME.  It doesn't support that, guess I'll have to go search for this one.  A quick search doesn't return an obvious answer.  A lot of install guides but no body talking about installing silently.  I did find a link to a WPKG package that has some command line switches burried in their XML file listed on the site.  It looks like LAME will take similar options to Audacity.  I'm going to pick the "/VERYSILENT", "/NORESTART", and "/LOG" options for the LAME installation.

Wrapping It Up

For both of the installations I just let it put the files in their default locations.  In the past you had to point Audacity to the LAME files so I used to always install the LAME dll files inside the Audacity directory.  That way when the end users tried to Export as MP3 and the window popped up asking for the dll file it was right there ready to click on.  It looks like in this new version of Audacity automatically searches the default LAME install folder (C:\Program Files\LAME for Windows).  Which is nice, that's one less thing for the end user to have to do.

I went ahead and built separate ZENworks installers for both Audacity and LAME.  I don't know why I'd ever deploy them separately, but now I can if I need to.  I'm also building a Bundle Group to include both of those installers to make it easier to assign to users.