Squiggle dot org

While trying to deploy the WPKG client onto newly built systems, I kept encountering the following error:

“There is a problem with
this Windows Installer Package. A program run as part of the setup did
not finish as expected. Contagt your support personnel or package
vendor.”

I was trying to install using the MSI with a specified settings.xml file using the following command:

msiexec /qb! /i wpkgclient1-3-6.msi SETTINGSFILE=\\server\wpkg\settings.xml

Looking at the windows installer logs, it appeared that the problem was with the settings file, after checking it was valid XML, I found out that if full paths with drive letters were specified (Z:\settings.xml) it installed fine!

Odd.

When using Windows SIM (System Image Manager), which is part of the Windows AIK (Automated Installation Kit) you might run inthe the the following error when you try and load a .WIM image…

“Windows sim was unable to generate a catalog”

Chances are that you are trying to open a .WIM image from the $RemoteInstall share. In this folder structure the WIM’s are slightly different as they incorporate metadata and a .RWM that contains the image data. The easy way around this is to fire up the Windows Deployment Services MMC, then find the image, right click and export to somewhere else. You should then be able to create a catalog using the newly exported .WIM.

I came accross some directories today on our NAS that couldn’t be deleted – I really needed to get rid of them as they were causing backups to fail! Every time I tried to delete, I got the following windows error:

“cannot delete file: cannot read from source or disk”

The solution to this, was to fire up a command prompt, and locate the directory in question (Map a network drive if it’s a UNC path!), then run:

dir /x /a

This should give you the directory name, along with its shortname (e.g. AEU8P3~P). You can then either delete the folder (rd /?) or rename it (ren /?) by using the shortname!

If you want to setup a Windows SVN server, it’s easy as pie!  I set one up for the company I work for as the Linux SVN Server was getting too difficult to manage.  I would highly recommend using the free version of VisualSVN server for Windows for your code repository: VisualSVN Server.

It’s a ~4MB msi installer, and it’s a doddle to add new repositories and manage them.  There is also an Enterprise version of the software should you need any extra features but we have found that the free one does everything we need and more.

Once you have installed the VisualSVN Server, download and install Tortoise SVN onto your computer: Tortoise Download.

You can then use Tortoise to update and commit code to your repository!