Product setup timeout

[sbmk]

Hi,
I'll have to deploy more than 100 clients in a near future, and most of them consist in hardware renewal. Thank to OPSI capabilities, I just have to change a MAC address and I can get the existing products selections. Very nice !
But when I tried to install a dozen of machines concurrently, I experienced problems : some products failed to install, when they work flawlessly when installed on a single machine.
The problem is rather unpredictable : a product can install on 6 machines out of 11, another can fail on just a single machine, ...
Of course, I can fix this by hand after a "batch" by running the setup where it failed, but it will be rather hard to manage.

I have a gigabit network and a dedicated server for OPSI. No bottlenecks as far as I can see, except the fact the "opsiconfd" tends to have a very high cpu usage ( say 120%) when dealing with numerous machines. It seems to be single-threaded, so it doesn't look strange to me.

Is there someting I can tweak so that my deployments don't fail under a heavy load ?
By the way, is there a timeout when a setup script is launched ? Does it have to be finished within a certain time frame ?
Regards

[n.wenselowski]

Hi,

I'll have to deploy more than 100 clients in a near future, and most of them consist in hardware renewal. Thank to OPSI capabilities, I just have to change a MAC address and I can get the existing products selections. Very nice !

It reads to me like you have one client and then only change the mac address to install another client with the same settings.
I would advise against this if you ever want to know what exactly is installed on one client! You may also run into problems and unnecessary work when you are working with many clients.
Rather work with a product with dependencies and the product property setup_after_install on the netboot products.

Is there someting I can tweak so that my deployments don't fail under a heavy load ?

If you are doing parallel deployments I'd make sure that they have a little gap in between the time they are working.
Easiest speedup here is to switch to the mysql backend. Otherwise check loads on your server and adjust machine specs accordingly.

By the way, is there a timeout when a setup script is launched ? Does it have to be finished within a certain time frame ?[/quote]
There is the setting action_processor_timeout. Please see the manual for more information.


With kind regards

Niko

[SisterOfMercy]

I've had issues with the windows installer (msiexec) which didn't finish in a certain manner. The rest of the products to be installed, based on the windows installer, would fail. I've yet to check if killtask "msiexec.exe" would help.

[sbmk]

Thanks for your reply !

It reads to me like you have one client and then only change the mac address to install another client with the same settings.
I would advise against this if you ever want to know what exactly is installed on one client! You may also run into problems and unnecessary work when you are working with many clients.

All those machines have to be identical (used by students in classrooms) and are replaced when their warranty is over. So yes, what has always been done since OPSI is used here, is to change the MAC address when a new computer is installed, ask for a windows reinstall and then wait until all products are reinstalled.
I don't know if the original configurations where tweaked by hand or made click by click.

And this year I'll add new machines to this list, so I made some ".ini" files copies and saw the modifications taken into account.

Rather work with a product with dependencies and the product property setup_after_install on the netboot products.

Most of the products used here don't have any dependencies : LibreOffice, CAD programs, text editors, IDE, ... they can be installed in any order.

If you are doing parallel deployments I'd make sure that they have a little gap in between the time they are working.
Easiest speedup here is to switch to the mysql backend. Otherwise check loads on your server and adjust machine specs accordingly.

I'll check this, and ask for some slaves

By the way, is there a timeout when a setup script is launched ? Does it have to be finished within a certain time frame ?[/quote]
There is the setting action_processor_timeout. Please see the manual for more information.


With kind regards

Niko[/quote]

[n.wenselowski]

Hi,

It reads to me like you have one client and then only change the mac address to install another client with the same settings.
I would advise against this if you ever want to know what exactly is installed on one client! You may also run into problems and unnecessary work when you are working with many clients.

All those machines have to be identical (used by students in classrooms) and are replaced when their warranty is over. So yes, what has always been done since OPSI is used here, is to change the MAC address when a new computer is installed, ask for a windows reinstall and then wait until all products are reinstalled.
I don't know if the original configurations where tweaked by hand or made click by click.

And this year I'll add new machines to this list, so I made some ".ini" files copies and saw the modifications taken into account.

Rather work with a product with dependencies and the product property setup_after_install on the netboot products.

Most of the products used here don't have any dependencies : LibreOffice, CAD programs, text editors, IDE, ... they can be installed in any order.

To clarify what I suggested: many users have meta-products that themselves do not install anything but they do have dependencies. The product could be something like "default-student-setup" and then would depend on LibreOffice, text editors, whatever...
Whenever you set this product to setup all those dependencies get set to setup aswell

I would like to discourage editing and copying the .ini files. Using the opsi interface is the way to go as this has safeguards in place to not render your installation in an invalid state.


Kind regards

Niko