Externalizing OS Targets

Objective

The purpose of this cool solution is to bridge the connectivity between the various operating system (OS) releases and the ZENworks releases.

This document provides information about the following :

• Configuring ZENworks Servers to work with the latest operating systems that are released in the market.
• Installing the ZENworks agent on devices running the latest operating systems that are still not part of the ZENworks support matrix.
• Updating the ZENworks agents and servers in the zone to the latest ZENworks version on operating systems that are no longer supported by ZENworks

Introduction

Often there is a gap between the release schedules across various products and hence there is a delay in achieving compatibility and support.  With ZENworks too, this is no exception. While ZENworks tries to add support for newly released versions of operating systems, there are instances where new versions of operating systems get released soon after the release of a  ZENworks version.

With this solution, administrator can now manage and experiment using ZENworks  with unsupported operating systems as well.

Disclaimer

This solution does not guarantee a successful installation/update of a Primary Server or a managed device.  ZENworks does not support platforms that were added through the custom_targets.xml file. This solution is only for evaluation purposes.

Table of Contents

• Performing prechecks
• Creating a custom ostargets.xml file
• Running the configure action 
• Performing postchecks
• Cleaning up custom entries
• Installing the Primary Server using  --skip-os-check
• Performing a fresh install of the agent using –I
• Updating the agent by adding the skipPlatformCheck.txt file 
• Conclusion

Performing prechecks

In the ZENworks zone, make a note of the current count of ostarget by running the following query on the database. 

select count(*) from zostarget  (The count might be 810.  It is for reference only.)

Note : You need to run this command after running ZoneConfigUpdateConfigureAction, to ensure that the records are added successfully to the ostarget.xml file

Creating a custom ostargets.xml file

Create a new custom_ostargets.xml file on the ZENworks Primary Server in the following location :

Windows Servers : %ZENWORKS_HOME%\conf\
Linux Servers : /etc/opt/novell/zenworks/conf