No Assigned Task Sequence
I’ve been setting up a virtual ConfigMgr environment on my laptop to use both for demonstrating at client locations as well as to use for the demo portions of my presentations at MMS and TechEd. It’s running inside Virtual PC 2007, and the server VM is running Windows Server 2008 and ConfigMgr 2007 SP1 R2. It actually runs pretty peppy…I do have the VM running on an external 7200 RPM hard drive connected to my laptop via an eSATA cable.
Anyway…I set up a Task Sequence to do my OS build and capture. It worked fine. Then I imported that WIM file and set up another Task Sequence to deploy that image. It was advertised to both the “All Unknown Computers” collection as well as a special OSD Deploy collection that I had created and imported the name and MAC address of the new VM into.
After booting the new VM with the Bootable Task Sequence media CD, it kept giving me this error message: “Failed to Run Task Sequence” “There are no task sequences available for this computer.” If I looked in the smsts.log file located at “X:\windows\temp\smsts”, I saw an error entry stating: “No assigned task sequence.” Looking through the log file, I could see that it was reading the correct MAC address and had the right SMS GUID that was assigned to the system that I imported. So it was clearly recognizing the machine. It was talking to ConfigMgr correctly. It was downloading policy, but it was determining that none of those policies were applicable. If I looked at the properties of either the Collection or the system, it showed that the advertisement for the Task Sequence was applicable to that computer. So…why would it show as applicable in the GUI, but not be evaluated as applicable during the task sequence?
After beating on this for entirely too long, I finally figured it out this afternoon. I had done a housekeeping task on my VM to move all of the default “All…” collections off of the root of the Collections node (see this post). After doing so, I had forgotten to update those collections after “moving” them. Shouldn’t matter…except that the “All Unknown Computers” collection was completely empty…including not having the “x86 Unknown Computer (x86 Unknown Computer)” or “x64 Unknown Computer (x64 Unknown Computer)” entries.
When the new VM was evaluating policy, it went through the following steps in the SMSTS.log.
Client Identity: GUID:24e41bb6-2d68-451a-9802-29f9f1bdd1ea
Netbios name: NewComputer
Client GUID = GUID:24e41bb6-2d68-451a-9802-29f9f1bdd1ea, Netbios name = NewComputer, State = Unknown
Client is unprovisioned
Using unknown machine GUID: 1b554c94-8eeb-490a-8b10-ae10bd579d3d
Unknown client identity: GUID:24e41bb6-2d68-451a-9802-29f9f1bdd1ea
Preparing Policy Assignment Request.
Setting transport.
Setting site code = CM1.
Setting client ID = 1b554c94-8eeb-490a-8b10-ae10bd579d3d.
Executing Policy Assignment Request.
Note what happens to the GUID. It starts off with the GUID that starts with “24e41…” and a state of “Unknown”. It then switches the GUID that it is going to use for the rest of the process to the “unknown machine GUID” which on my system starts with “1b554…”…this is the GUID for the “x86 Unknown Computer (x86 Unknown Computer)” resource that should be in the “All Unknown Computers” collection. After switching the GUID, you see the last line that I pasted in above where it is “Executing Policy Assignment Request.”
Because I had not updated the collection…and the “x86 Unknown Computer (x86 Unknown Computer)” resource didn’t exist in any collection…there wasn’t any advertisement that was applicable to that GUID. It behaved exactly like it should have. It just took me a long long time to figure out why it was failing. Once I updated the collection, the “problem” went away.
In this instance, it was definitely a PEBKAC issue…Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
ConfigMgr Version Numbers
This post is out of date. A more complete listing of both site server version numbers as well as client version numbers can be found in this new blog post.
I have been installing ConfigMgr in a virtual environment on my laptop this week. This will serve as both a Demo environment for my MMS/TechEd presentations as well as a “Proof of Concept” environment when I am talking with clients.
I was wanting to check which version of ConfigMgr I had installed but wasn’t able to quickly locate the version numbers for each version, so I figured I’d post this out to help others.
Go to ConfigMgr Console / Site Database / Site Management, then right click your site and choose Properties. The version will be listed on the properties screen.
| ConfigMgr RTM | 4.00.5931.0000 |
| ConfigMgr SP1 | 4.00.6221.1000 The “R2 installed” field will state “No”. (See the screenshot below.) |
| ConfigMgr R2 | 4.00.6221.1000 The “R2 installed” field will state “Yes”. |
| ConfigMgr R2 SP2 (RC) | 4.00.6468.2001 |
| ConfigMgr R2 SP2 (RTM) | 4.00.6487.2000 |
Presenting at TechEd Too???
Last week I had big news about being invited to be a presenter at the Microsoft Management Summit. That was huge and very encouraging…a very big week. Then came Friday afternoon…
I’m at my daughter’s school watching her in a Geography Bowl competition (which she won!). Just as it was starting, my phone buzzed…an email. I took a quick glance just to see who sent the email. It was from Martin Dey again. Here is part of what it said (copied with Martin’s permission):
The product team liked your topic “Operating System Deployment (OSD) in the Real World” so much they asked me to also propose it for the TechEd US event. They felt this was one of the strongest industry proposals we had received across both MMS and TechEd .
So I went ahead and cross-submitted your topic, and I’m pleased to report it has also been selected for the TechEd US event in Los Angeles in May.
I almost dropped the phone. Wide eyed, I looked over at my wife and told her, “I just received a really big email. We need to talk after this is over.” I spent the rest of the afternoon shaking my head and repeating “Wow”. To say that I am excited would be an understatement! And honestly, that statement from Martin is both honoring and humbling at the same time. Wow was that encouraging. As a family, we went out to celebrate Friday night. Laurel wanted McDonald’s. I wanted Chinese. We did both!
I still need to confirm that I can get the time from Virteva to do the TechEd event, but I don’t think it will be a problem!
Update: Just found out from my leadership that I can officially accept the TechEd speaking invitation!
Presenting at MMS 2009
This morning I got an email from Martin Dey (Microsoft) confirming that my session proposal for MMS 2009 has been accepted! I will be presenting at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas! My session is titled “Operating System Deployment in the Real World”.
I’ll admit…there is certainly a combination of excitement and terror going through my head at this point. Looking forward to it…but I’m also aware that there is going to be a lot of work between now and April 27 to prepare for the session.
See you in Vegas!
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