New Clerk PC hardware - 2021

[Mikerowaved]

A direct quote from the person handling it is "We found the computer is in the Workforce Sub Estate and not the Meetinghouse Sub Estate in Sophos".

I'm curious, did the PC(s) have to be behind a church firewall to be detected?

[russellhltn]

A direct quote from the person handling it is "We found the computer is in the Workforce Sub Estate and not the Meetinghouse Sub Estate in Sophos".

I'm curious, did the PC(s) have to be behind a church firewall to be detected?

No idea. I did prep them on the meetinghouse network. Depending on what I was doing, it was either wired or wireless. Both seem to be considered "Liahona". As such, I'd assume this is a "phone home" situation and not "CHQ reaching out and touching" since the same 192.168 IPs are reused in each meetinghouse.

Note this was the machine that the first guy couldn't find. I'm thinking he was looking in the "meethinghouse" sub-group where I should have been, instead of searching the entire enterprise.

One of the oddities in my conversation with GSD is that many of my computers were "assigned" to the FM assistant. She orders the machines, but doesn't use them. I have to wonder if there's a misunderstanding of the purpose of that field that's behind the problem. (Sort of like how "head of household" isn't necessarily the child's legal guardian.)

[russellhltn]

But do you recommend I update all of them to 21H1 to avoid a unit having to do that later?

I don't know if it's recommended, but that's what I did.

I updated to 20H2 since that's what the computer wanted to do anyway. I wonder if 22H1 might be the magic to fix my LibreOffice issue.

[Mikerowaved]

I wonder if 22H1 might be the magic to fix my LibreOffice issue.

The one's I'm working on are all at 22H1 and none of them could run LO 7.1.6, After upgrading to 7.2.1, they all could run it without any issues.

I did prep them on the meetinghouse network. Depending on what I was doing, it was either wired or wireless. Both seem to be considered "Liahona". As such, I'd assume this is a "phone home" situation and not "CHQ reaching out and touching" since the same 192.168 IPs are reused in each meetinghouse.

I think that's the difference. I set mine up at home. On a church network, every 10 minutes the firewall passes any new machine names, MAC addresses, timestamps, and I'm sure other info they get from a DHCP request, back to CHQ to be logged. (You can see some of the info yourself when you select "Get Connected Devices" in TM.) Since all the church machines are supposed to be setup with unique names, they can be found on any church network. Yes, only IF they're looking in the right log!

One of the oddities in my conversation with GSD is that many of my computers were "assigned" to the FM assistant. She orders the machines, but doesn't use them. I have to wonder if there's a misunderstanding of the purpose of that field that's behind the problem. (Sort of like how "head of household" isn't necessarily the child's legal guardian.)

I can see that causing a problem, I'll find out tomorrow when I take my first batch to a church building to be installed. Unfortunately, I might not be able to talk to the right people at GSD until Monday.

[russellhltn]

It looks like the provisioning tool on the website has been updated. No idea if it makes a difference or not.

[Mikerowaved]

It looks like the provisioning tool on the website has been updated. No idea if it makes a difference or not.

Grrr... Just as I'm finishing up!

Edit: So it's only 281MB? OK, I'll try it on this last PC and see what's different.

[russellhltn]

OK, I'll try it on this last PC and see what's different.

At that point I'm sure there's something mis-configuring machines on the back end. It's possible it's the provisioning tool. But that's a fairly wild guess with no supporting data.

[Mikerowaved]

Not much different, so far, except it doesn't install Adobe Reader or LibreOffice. Time will tell whether Sophos shows up or not.

[craiggsmith]

The three I got that worked out of the box have LibreOffice 6.2 (which works fine). Not sure when they changed the provisioning tool but none of the ones I re-imaged this week have it.

[Mikerowaved]

The three I got that worked out of the box have LibreOffice 6.2 (which works fine).

While that will work for most, LibreOffice 7.x has some nice improvements that are worth having.