aggieNick02's questions

I've got a Cyberpower 81002 PDU. It works well. In trying to get data from it using snmpget for multiple OIDs I would sometimes get:

Error in packet
Reason: (tooBig) Response message would have been too large.

So I learned about snmpbulkget. The device supports SNMPv3, so I thought this would be a good option. But I can't get even a simple snmpbulkget for a single OID to work, even when specifying only non-repeaters and no repetitions. That is, I have the following results:

> snmpget -v 3 10.103.129.1 -u user CPS-MIB::ePDU2DeviceStatusLoad.1
CPS-MIB::ePDU2DeviceStatusLoad.1 = Gauge32: 17
>snmpbulkget -v 3 10.103.129.1 -u user CPS-MIB::ePDU2DeviceStatusLoad.1
Timeout: No Response from 10.103.129.1
>snmpbulkget -v 3 -Cn1 -Cr0 10.103.129.1 -u user CPS-MIB::ePDU2DeviceStatusLoad.1
Timeout: No Response from 10.103.129.1

Am I missing something obvious in trying to use snmpbulkget? Or does this device just not fully support SNMPv3?

For pushing small changes to an existing wim image, you can significantly reduce network traffic by using the previous wim file as a base wim and a file that contains only the "changes" as the main wim.

wimlib is an open source library for playing with wim files, and it has an awesome feature to make doing creating these "changes-only" wim files. You just do:

.\wimlib-imagex.exe capture <folder_to_capture> <output.wim> --delta-from=<base.wim>

The result is a tiny output.wim that has only metadata and the files that differ from base.wim. You can then apply the image, even with Microsoft's tools, as so:

Expand-WindowsImage -ImagePath <output.wim> -Index 1 -ApplyPath `
<output_folder> -SplitImageFilePattern <base.wim>

Two questions:

1. Do Microsoft's first-party imagex/dism tools offer any way to get the same functionality (just so I can avoid adding another dependency if possible)? They offer splitting an existing wim into pieces, but I don't see anything to help create a "delta" type wim from a folder/wim and a base wim.

2. If not, are there any issues I should be aware with when using wimlib? My use case is capturing and applying images via Microsoft's Deployment Toolkit. I see wimlib does not support NTFS extended attributes yet, but MDT does not capture those as far as I can tell.

I've got an environment where machines on the network all PXE boot as their first boot option. Depending on server configuration, each machine will either PXE boot into a custom task, or will just do an ipxe exit, which causes the machine to proceed to the next boot device.

This works just fine on real machines. I've got windows installed on the machines and if the PXE boot process returns exit, the machine falls through to the next boot option, which results in Windows loading.

But on a Generation 2 Hyper-V VM, once the PXE boot returns exit, the boot sequence is over. The boot options that follow in the VMs boot sequence list are not tried. If the server tells the machine to PXE boot into a custom task, that works just fine. So it is just the "fall-through" to the next boot options that doesn't work.

Is this a known issue? Is there something I can configure to get the behavior I want/expect?

I've got an MDT deployment which does things a little differently based on the network location. From one of the locations, I have two webservices I need to call. My initial failed attempt was:

[Settings]
Priority=DefaultGateway

[DefaultGateway]
10.0.0.1=LOCATION_A
10.100.0.1=LOCATION_B

[LOCATION_A]
Subsection=WebService1
Subsection=WebService2

[WebService1]
WebService=http://contoso.com/webservice1

[WebService2]
WebService=http://contoso.com/webservice2

I quickly discovered this doesn't work, because you can only have one subsection in a section. So the best I could come up with was to have one webservice call another. This works, but now as the webservices evolve and have other callers, I have to maintain multiple copies of some services (that is, both chained and unchained). For example,

[Settings]
Priority=DefaultGateway

[DefaultGateway]
10.0.0.1=LOCATION_A
10.100.0.1=LOCATION_B

[LOCATION_A]
Subsection=WebService1AndWebService2

[WebService1]
WebService=http://contoso.com/webservice1

[WebService2]
WebService=http://contoso.com/webservice2

[WebService1AndWebService2]
WebService=http://contoso.com/webservice1
Subsection=WebService2

So I've got two places now where I have to maintain WebService1's url, parameters, etc.

Is there a better way within CustomSettings.ini? Should I just resort to calling the webservices manually from the task sequence instead of trying to pull this off from CustomSettings.ini?

We're setting up some systems to PXEboot via iPXE and, depending on a master server state, either boot normally or reimage via wimboot and MDT. The systems are configured to boot from the network first. iPXE and wimboot are both running under UEFI.

It works great, except at the end of the windows installation, the BIOS has been modified to point to the new Windows Boot Manager as the primary boot device. So it can't be imaged again without entering the bios and changing settings.

I understand why the boot order gets changed as the wimboot/MDT process involves multiple restarts. But I really would like to either keep PXE as the primary boot throughout or manipulate the boot order back to have network first when done. (My PXE server will pass on the network boot opportunity to allow the install to work or leave the system alone when no imaging is needed.)

Update - I see two possibilities:

1. Figure out how the windows installer tells UEFI to boot from the destination install disk, and do the same thing when the windows install is done to set back to PXE boot.
2. Play with the Windows Boot Manager and BCDEdit after installation of windows to place the PXE booting option above booting from local disk (question found at superuser is basically the same question as here. The end result discussed there isn't quite what I really want (PXE first in UEFI settings) but might yield the same behavior (PXE boot always getting a chance to act before windows starts).