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Chapter 3. OES NetWare Clients > Automatic Client Upgrade
Automatic Client Upgrade
Although the Client Upgrade Agent has largely replaced this functionality, Novell still offers the ACU feature to automate the upgrade of multiple existing workstations to the latest Novell client. With the ACU, you place ACU commands in a container login script to detect whether the client software needs to be installed, and then the ACU updates the workstation automatically, if necessary, when the user logs in. For more information on login scripts, see Appendix B.
The ACU feature works best in situations when your workstations have similar configurations, because you define a common set of instructions for updating all the workstations in the same way.
To use the ACU process to upgrade a workstation to the Novell client, complete the following steps:
1. | Copy the complete \WINNT or \WIN95 directory structure to the server from which users will access the client files. This structure is created when you extract the Novell client files from the Zip file downloaded from http://download.novell.com. Note You can create the CLIENT directory on any NetWare volume, but make sure users have Read and File Scan rights to the folder so that they can locate the installation files. For more information on file system rights, see Chapter 7. |
2. | (Conditional) If you want to create an install routine that doesn't require any user input, use NCIMan to create an UNATTEND.TXT file, as discussed previously in this chapter. Save the UNATTEND.TXT file in the same directory from which users will run SETUP.EXE or SETUPNW.EXE to install the new Novell client. If you use a platform-specific configuration file to configure the Novell client and you are using ACU.EXE, you must change the [UNATTENDFILE] option to Yes in the ACU.INI file, found in the WINNT\i386 directory. |
3. | Use iManager to add the following to the container login script for those users whom you want to receive the updated client. These commands support both Windows 9x and Windows XP/2000 clients:
IF OS = "WINNT" THEN
@\\SERVERNAME\VOLNAME\...\SETUPNW.EXE /ACU /u:UNATTEND.TXT
END
IF OS = "WIN95" THEN
@\\SERVERNAME\VOLNAME\...\SETUP.EXE /ACU /u:UNATTEND.TXT
END
Tip For Windows 9x workstations only, you can back up the old client configuration instead of just replacing it with the new client software. To do this, add the option /RB (for rollback) to the end of this command. This option will copy the current software configuration to NOVELL\CLIENT32\NWBACKUP. If this does not work, you can also use ROLLBACK.EXE to accomplish the same thing. |
4. | When the login script executes during a user login, the appropriate setup program will check the Windows Registry on the destination workstation to see exactly which version of the client is currently running. The setup routine will run only if the workstation's Registry indicates a Novell client version older than the version to be installed. |
Tip
If you need to reinstall the same client version on a workstation, you can use NCIMan to modify the Major or Minor INTERNAL version of the client so that it looks to the setup routine as if the client is newer than that previously installed. The version setting is stored in the UNATTEND.TXT file.
The next time the users in the group log in, their workstations will be upgraded automatically to the new Novell client. For more information on ACU options, see the Novell online documentation.
