Cool Blogs

We’ve spent the last month or so working hard.

As Laurence wrote - we have just released the first update to ZENworks 10 Configuration Management.

I’ve got three pieces of news to share:

• ZENworks System Updates
• Patch Management Services
• Asset Management Services entitlements

Read more below.

Written at: Draper, UT

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We have updated the ZCM DVD on http://download.novell.com

Go check it out…

The openSUSE team is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 10.3. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE project provides free, easy access to the world’s most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE. openSUSE is released regularly, is stable, secure, contains the latest free and open source software, and comes with several new technologies.

openSUSE 10.3 will be supported with security and other serious updates for a period of 2 years.

This version contains new beautiful green artwork, KDE 3.5.7 and parts of KDE 4, SUSE-polished GNOME 2.20, a GTK version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, MP3 support out-of-the-box, new and redesigned YaST modules, compiz and compiz fusion advances, virtualisation improvements, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Xfce 4.4.1, and much more! Read on for details of what is new and available in openSUSE 10.3, and for all the necessary download links.
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Does determining which TAO file goes with which driver object on which server cause you grief? Let’s work on that a little bit.
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We have just published a survey on YaST, our systems management and installation framework.

If you use any of the distributions openSUSE, SUSE Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, I encourage you to participate in our survey to support us improving YaST. The survey will be online until mid November and the results will be published on openSUSE.org.

Click here to take the survey.

Btw. if you like to know more about YaST, visit the openSUSE YaST wiki.

Thanks for participating in the survey - and a big THANK YOU to Anica to design this together with quite a couple of different stakeholders in YaST,

Andreas

We’ve just released ZENworks 7 SP1 IR1 and it’s available from http://download.novell.com - these patches are currently in beta, and if all goes well, they will move out of beta status in a week or two. If you download them you’ll be sent an email inviting you to give your opinion of the patch, and thus can help when it’s time to decide if the patch is good enough to move from beta status.

So why “Interim Release”, why not another “Hot Patch” ? The resources needed for testing a set of patches varies considerably from Hot Patch to Interim Release, and from Interim Release to Support Pack. If we only put out Interim Releases or Support Packs, we’d only be able to release patches on a much more infrequent basis. It’s always a balancing act between getting patches out in a timely fashion, and putting them through a rigorous testing regime. I know we don’t always get it right, but we try to!

We look forward to getting your feedback on this set of patches…

I’m leaving the UK for two weeks vacation in Mexico, at a cookery school in Oaxaca now, so look after yourselves, and I look forward to seeing your comments when I get back.

It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged so what have I been up to?  Well, one of the most recent things was dealing with DST in New Zealand.  Just like the US they moved their start and end dates.  We tackled it by licensing a custom made module for Omni Riva.  The module inserts a query folder into everyones mailbox that displays all appointments in the extra weeks of DST.  Riva has a large amount of other modules already available.

We are approaching closed Beta for GroupWise Bonsai and GMS on Linux is already in closed Beta so our engineering teams are working flat out.  Teaming+Conferencing is also in closed beta right now and it’s looking good.  The other thing that we are about to embark on is nailing down the features for GroupWise Monterrey, which is the version after Bonsai.  All in all, October is going to be a busy month.

There are a mountain of other things that I am working on right now, which I will be sure to blog about when I am able to.  And of course, a few of us are in Miami next week for GW Advisor, which looks like it will be good week.

After two and a half years of development with hundreds of thousands of hours of effort I am pleased to announce that Open Enterprise Server 2 has gone gold and is being handed off to our operations department today.

It takes a few days for us to complete the final checking of the builds, which includes downloading the mastered CD images from our download server, checking for viruses and performing several installations.

So, for those of you that have been waiting for Open Enterprise Server 2, the wait is nearly over, just a few more days and it’s all yours. If you want to get a headstart then I would recommend downloading SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 now. OES2 will be available on a single CD, one for i386 and the other for x86-64.

Head on over to http://download.novell.com/ to download SUSE Linux now.

Updated: This iManager plug-in will be part of a milestone release after the release of Antelope (IDM 3.5.1).

Identity Manager users have requested UI that presents a driver’s health. Access to specific driver cache statistics has been added to the 3.5.1 release of Identity Manager. The IDM administration team has developed new driver health and statistics UI in iManager that reads the driver and server and presents health information. The following describes the new UI.

Driver Health & Statistics

The driver set graphic view now includes a health semaphore on the driver icon. The semaphore represents the health of the driver as configured by the administrator. If the health thresholds are not configured for the driver, the semaphore does not display.

Clicking on the semaphore will display the health and statistics dialog.

The Driver Health and Statistics dialog shows the driver cache file and related details. The cache file size is dynamic, by default, therefore, the graph representing it’s size will fluctuate depending on the percentage of space consumed by the unprocessed transactions. The dialog also includes the current semaphore light, similar to the driver icon.

The bottom section represents the detail of the driver cache file. This section includes the unprocessed transactions total and a bar graph for each transaction. These include: add, remove, modify, move, rename, resync entry, request resync, and custom.

Driver Health Configuration

The Green and Yellow states of the driver health semaphore can be configured. If the conditions of the Green light fail, the semaphore changes to the Yellow light. If the conditions of the Yellow light fail, it switches to the Red light. No conditions are set for the Red light. Therefore, an administrator can define what conditions determine when a Green or Yellow light will display. They are configured in the “Health Configuration” option in the contextual menu when clicking on the driver state icon.

Driver Health & Statistics Dashboard

Also included in the UI is a dashboard view of all the drivers in a driver set. For each driver, a Health & Statistics window is displayed. You can set the refresh to continually refresh all the windows on the page. A user can also change the display to 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns, depending upon the resolution of the user’s monitor.

The idea behind this UI is to expose known driver functionality so that Identity Manager experts and administrators can start learning about how their drivers are working. Over time, this knowledge can help when troubleshooting a specific driver problem.

Any feedback or comments on this new UI is anticipated and greatly appreciated.

It’s a busy time for everyone involved with ZENworks, not just for the people at Novell but also for the Novell Partners.

Tomorrow (Sept 27) ENGL will be running a Webinar demonstrating their new ENGL Imaging Toolkit 5, the version that will tightly integrate with ZENworks Configuration Management. Maybe you’ve heard about ENGL but wonder what exactly they can do, or if you are currently working with 5 or 10 different images and start to think about what to do to create images for Vista, it might be interesting to have a look at what the toolkit can do for you.

October 20 – 22 there is GWAVACon in Berlin, again GWAVCon Europe will be a combined GroupWise and ZENworks event. A great opportunity to learn about all what happens with ZENworks and GroupWise. Personally I won’t be at GWAVACon this year, I’ll be mountain biking in the south of Germany that week enjoying a nice vacation with my family :-).

On October 11, I will be going to the Packaging Event in Amsterdam, an event focused at customers from the Netherlands and Belgium about application packaging. Customers from the Netherlands or Belgium that would like to know more about application packaging and the Microsoft Installer (MSI), have a look in your agenda and maybe I’ll see you in Amsterdam.