Looking at the DirXML console, I noticed some users were erroring out with the message: “problem 1005 (CONSTANT_ATT_TYPE), Atta 0, AttphysicalDeliveryOfficeNamephysicalDeliveryOfficeName)”.

Now I already knew “physicalDeliveryOfficeName” mapped to the NDS Location value from setting up our help desk software. Looking at the users they had one thing in common: all had multiple Location entries in NDS. TID 10097756 confirmed that this was the problem – and replacing the multiple location entries with a single one fwalkthroughoblem.

There is a walkthrough on the Cool Solutions siteMulti tells how to convert a Multi-valued Attribute to a Single-valued, Comma-delimited String. It can be found at http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/15107.html automatically – pretty slick stuff. It’s
apparently a ‘featuDirXML both Identity Manager/DirXML and AD that users with more than one physical office location are skipped. Being a school district, we have dozens of staff that move from location to location and it’s nice to be able to keep track of their multiple building assignments in the network directory. Just another example of how the more I dig into Active Directory, the more I like NDS.

1. Allow for user password self-service
2. Sync GroupWise passwords with NDS passwords
3. Import staff accounts into AD from NDS

Users expect to be able to reset their own passwords with a challenge-response system. So far this part of the system is working great – however we haven’t rolled it out across all users as we need to develop some training so that when the 1st day that logging in will ask you to answer questions comes that users know what to do.

The other two options could prove to be significant time savers. Having GroupWise sync with NDS – especially when initially creating users should reduce administration time quite a bit. AD sync will allow all of the millions of Windows apps that are AD aware to use the account info in AD and save boatloads of time by not requiring separate account administration.

In reality, I’m fairly disappointed with what we have so far…


The NDS to GroupWise sync seems to be continually stuck trying to sync a single user (I guess we are generating corrupt cache files). Stopping, disabling, re-enabling and restarting the service/driver seems to take care of the problem for a little while, but so far it has always come back. We have a ticket open with Novell and should get it resolved soon, but it’s still disappointing so far.

Our AD sync has not gone much better – about 1/8 of our staff (from NDS) are not showing up in AD. My initial troubleshooting makes it look like the users with multiple locations in NDS are not being copied. We’ll see if removing one of the locations fixes the issue, but what do I do then for my users that actually work between two locations?

My long-term goal is to create users ‘automagically’ once they show up in our HR or student databases, and create accounts for them in NDS, AD, as well as our LMS (Blackboard), Lunch System (FastLane), as well as create import files for websites like StudyIsland.com and TurnItIn.com. With the issues we have had with syncing ids, I’m a little less sure that automatic account generation will be reliable. We’ll see what the next couple weeks bring.

I’ have already listened to the first one which focuses on iFolder and NLD. The speakers knew their topics well, and although I was already familiar with both products, I learned quite a bit. Future topics include: Samba, Banshee and Novell Identity Manager. They are looking for input on future topics, so let them know what you want to hear about!

“evilzenscientist :: thoughts � ZENworks 7 imaging: “ZENworks OS imaging has always been based on the Linux kernel – it’s fast, efficient, has a great networking stack and is also extensible. None of the problems of DOS and getting NDIS drivers etc.

Earlier versions of ZENworks – (ZfD 3.x, ZfD 4.0, ZENworks 6, ZENworks 6.5) – spawned a slew of sites dedicated to tweaking this Linux environment. Notable is the Novell Forge Project zfdimgdrv. The imaging environment has also been extended by the likes of ENGL.

ZENworks 7 changed to a SLES 9 SP2-based kernel; this provides extensive hardware support (and real support; things that have been tested).”

(Back to T.J.’s Thoughts:) I think this is another excellent reason to upgrade – matching drivers – especially with the Dell Optiplex line – has been a nightmare with previous versions of imaging. I know most of these machines are supported well with SLES 9 – I’ve been running it on a couple in test senarios on and off for a while. I do have ZenWorks under my SLA, so the cost is nill for me, and the benifits are starting to far overweight the potential problems.

Set the SATA drive to compatibility mode in BIOS, and use the BCM57_v753 boot disk. This is the only version that seems to work with the SATA drives and broadcomm driver reliably. There is a new version based on the 2.6.11 kernel that I’ve tested with a bit, but it won’t install the Zen partition or LILO on the SATA drive reliably.

To clarify what Novell means when it says it is “opening” SUSE, Mancusi-Ungaro says “SUSE Linux is already open from a code perspective. [It] has not been open from a development perspective. Development was closed, beta was closed, and there was little opportunity for users and external developers to help us shape the product. Now there will be, through the OpenSUSE project.”

The project has an interesting roadmap:
Phase One: (August 2005)

• Establish the openSUSE community
• Deliver the essential community infrastructure: website, downloadable builds, and source. Open Bugzilla, IRC, and channels.
• Accept patches for SUSE Linux 10.0 beta through bugzilla
• Open beta testing of SUSE Linux 10.0.

Phase Two: (targeted spring 2006)

• Simplify the patch submission process and establish a formal code checkout/checkin system
• Personalized developer accounts to allow easier participation in the openSUSE development process

Phase Three: (targeted summer 2006)

• Introduce a complete community infrastructure – with the publicly accessible build server, packagers can quickly create packages and incorporate them into test versions of the entire distribution.