Manual Client Installation

[Jera]

Well, here's an old one but I can find no satisfactory resolution to it.

We have a 3 subnet site on which we are trying to manually install clients using SMSMAN.exe. The boundries are set, the Logon Points and CAP's are set, we're on an SMS 2.0 SP3 Secondary Site with all the discovery agents running (and succesfully I might add.) No errors in the component status, nothing that I can find in the logs, but when I run SMSMAN.exe on a client machine (from the SMSLOGON share on the PDC) it installs the Base Components and then comes back 'There is no Site Server configured to manage this computer'

Can anybody help?

J :-(

 

[Jpoandl]

This initially sounds like a boundary problem:

Many people have problem setting up the SITE BOUNDARIES. You have to consider that the SUBNETs that define your site, will always use the client SUBNET MASK. Here's an example:

Say your everyone subnet starts with 10.x.x.x You might think that this is a class A address scheme. However, all clients are configured with a 255.255.0.0 subnet mask. Therefore, if you were to put 10.0.0.0 in your site boundaries, you would only pick up the client in the 10.0.x.x subnet...eventhough you have clients in the 10.1.0.0, 10.2.0.0, 10.3.0.0, 10.4.0.0...etc. Unfortunately, in the scenerio, you will have place all of your subnets into your SITE BOUNDARIES (10.0.0.0, 10.1.0.0, 10.2.0.0, 10.3.0.0, 10.4.0.0...etc)

Check your boundaries...this is the most common mistake.

If you are aware of how boundaries work and you don't think this relates to your problem, I would start your troubleshooting from the client side:

1) Look in the local SMS logs. When you install the client (doesn't matter which way), SMS log file are generated on the client. Did you take a look at these? I would. Often this will tell you EXACTLY what is wronge with the client installation. C:\Windows(winnt)\MS\SMS\LOGS (CliCore, CCIM32, CLINST...etc)

2) Look on the site server for errors with regards to the new client installations. SMS has very robust logging. Many times it will tell you that a client is trying to install but is failing.

3) Remove the client and then re-install

4) Note which types of clients are failing...is it just the NT based systems or 9x, laptops or desktops, etc.

5) Check out

http://www.swynk.com

This site rules for SMS stuff.

-hope this helps. Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2000

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please check out

http://www.esavio.com

 

[Jera]

Thanks for the help. I will have to make an exhaustive search of the client install logs. It will only install the SMS Base Components though, none of the rest installs so we only have WNmanual.log to check, I think there might be a CCim32 or Clicore log as well, I've asked the local site admins to send them over to me.

It's not OS specific either, tried it on both 9x and Win2k Pro boxes with the same result.

I agree that it is likely to be a client side issue, just can't pin it down yet.

Thanks again for the help.

J.