Ghost is the bane of my life.

[catsidhe]

GODDESSDAMMIT I HATE GHOSTING!

I hate Ghost and its braindead interface (point and dribble clicky clicky drag and drop, who cares if a text file, a simple regexp, and in "import" option might reduce the workload in setting something like this up by an order of fucking magnitude!)
I hate the network (I especially hate at the moment how the magic Central Services pixies came over the break and upgraded the switches on the lab levels so that the machines all have Gb ethernet now (good), and have to make a saving throw for DHCP (bad). We thought that this might be some idiots camping on IPs with static setups, but this is too random and specific (yes, both at the same time) to fit that category. My theory is strongly leaning to "they installed shit which can't do what we need it to do", but I'm willing to be convinced by "they set up defaults which are killing us by actively preventing the sort of thing we need to do on a regular basis.")
I hate the last-second OMFG DO IT FUCKING NOW!!! pressure. And it is always the last second.
I hate the sheep cattle students peering in the windows, like I'm a zoo exhibit. No, the labs are not ready. No, I don't know when they will be. Fuck off so I can finish.


Just generally, I hate all the little ways that things conspire to fuck everything up, and prevent everything from working.

Comments

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

Um...

Ghost should be able to do an automated type thing.
At least when I was using it.

Bunged the disk in, booted from it, and it bought up the network interface, got an address, mapped a network drive and started the ghost automatically..

i was however, running a customised DOS boot-cdrom.
I might have a copy of it somewhere...

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

DHCP is a wonderful thing, and I have (through dint of great personal suffering and a spirit quest into the depths of PCI implementation) figured out how to add network cards to the multicard template that Symantec didn't know about when they burned the gold cd for Ghost. We have universal boot consoles, which work on any machine in any lab, and if they don't then they will soon goddammit.

There are several sources of pain in this lovely theory. First, DHCP is a wonderful thing... when it works. If, however, there is something about the setup of the switch which is, say, blocking ports on an unpredictable basis, such that they don't see the DHCP server, or anything else for that matter, linklight notwithstanding. (We think we've killed that one by turning off VMPS.)

Then there is the fun of having a set up such that when you ghost a lab, the same machine gets the same name every time. Sure, Ghost has a nifty template configuration, but it's basically random, and so is of no help whatsoever. What we do is to set up a list of configurations, one per lab seat, and then in a task associate them with machines, as detected and listed by MAC address. To set up these configurations, there is no keyboard only interface. There is no "fill in the gaps in a continuous pattern" option. You have to set up each configuration one by one by one, point and clicky clicky clicky until your wrist falls off and your shoulders burn, because there is NO FUCKING WAY TO AUTOMATE IT AT ALL IF ONLY THEY'D LET ME JUST WHIP UP A LIST IN VIM AND IMPORT A TSV OR SOMETHING, BUT NO THAT IS OBVIOUSLY TOO FUCKING DIFFICULT!!!

Ghosting, the copying of the image across, is easy. Configuring, when you have a couple of dozen labs of between 22 and 34 machines each, that is a gold plated son of a bitch.

[atheoi.livejournal.com]

You've never ghosted through lj?