Remote Deployment

To deploy a captured OS image remotely, to a single or group of devices, the OS image must be uploaded to a SquareOne Companion instance and configured into a deployable package.

The following sections describe this process specifically with an OS image in mind. 

Configure Package

In the SquareOne Companion UI, go to the Packages tab and click the orange + icon in the lower-right corner to create a new package.

To create a new version of an existing package, click the package and then the + icon at the right of the package entry to create a new version of that package. In that case, the creation flow will start from the File Information section below.

 

On the Define Package screens (below), complete the fields. Guidance is provided in the following sections.

Note: Click the Show advanced options toggle to see the Installation and Process sections of the package creation.

 

Package Information

Name: A suitable name for your OS image package.

Description: A description for your OS image package.

Note that the name and description fields persist across versions, so these should not be specific to a version of the OS image.

File Information

Install Type: Choose OS. This will place the image in the specified destination directory and executed an appropriately configured Post-Install command to deploy and install the OS image.

Downloaded Name: Choose a suitable name for the destination file. Note that this name also persists across versions, so should not be specific to a version of the image.

Destination Path: Choose C:\WIM. This is not essential, but for consistency, this is where previous versions of SquareOne look for OS images.

File: Click the folder icon to upload the OS image from a locally attached device. The UI will indicate progress. The filename should be specific to the version, so requires a unique name (e.g. ‘Kiosk5000_OS_v0.0.6.wim’). Alternatively, choose Use existing file to select a file that has been previously uploaded and used in a different package/version.

 

Version Information

Version: Specify the version name of the OS. This can be different to the version embedded in the image during capture, but for consistency and clarity it is good practice to use the same version here. Versions can be free format text or in the semantic form 0.0.0 or v0.0.0.

OS: Set the option setting to “Windows”. This will cause a Post-Install command to be auto-generated when a version for the package is created that can be used to install the associated image file.

Architecture / Device Type: Optionally limit the devices that this package can be applied to. 

 

Installation Information (Advanced Only)

Install Timeout: For OS images, this should be long enough for the image to download and be applied. Allow several hours depending on the expected speed of connection and size of the image.

Install Attempts: For an OS image, it is recommended that this is initially set to 1. As the client and companion are unable to communicate during an OS update, this stops the companion from attempting to retry an update that may still be in progress.

Post-Install Command: This should be pre-seeded with the command to apply the downloaded image. If required, this can be changed here.

Post-Install Command: A command here invokes the Recovery Agent to install the newly download OS image. By default, when the first version of an OS package is created, the Post-Install command is auto-generated based on the associated package information. The command can then be customized as necessary depending on the desired action to be applied to the specified OS image file. The initial command is designed to install and apply the specified OS image to the device.

Here is a summary of the other Post-Install commands that can be used for an OS installation package.

Note: A recovery partition must exist first with enough free space before these Post-Install commands can be used. Refer to the Local Deployment section above to review the process to create a recovery partition by deploying an image locally.

Storing the Windows OS Image File in the Recovery Partition and applying It

RecoveryAgent.exe <WIM file> -restart

Copies the specified WIM file to the recovery partition and then applies it

Storing the Windows OS Image File in the Recovery Partition (without applying it)

RecoveryAgent.exe <WIM file>

Only copies the specified WIM file to the recovery partition

The “<WIM file>” argument is the full path to the image file as specified in the OS installation package. E.g. if the the package has a “Destination Path” specified as “C:\WIM” and a Destination File Name of “Kiosk5000.wim”, then the full path for the “<WIM file>” would be “C:\WIM\Kiosk5000.wim”.

Note that if the post-install command is not used to store and/or apply the OS image, the command terminal interface can be used to later send the required command(s).

Process Information (Advanced Only)

Process Information is not applicable for OS type packages.

Click Create to create the package and/or version.

 

Deploy Package

Once the package has been correctly configured in SquareOne Companion as described above, it may be deployed to devices.

 

Remote Recovery

Once an image has been successfully deployed and applied, the deployed image remains in the hidden partition. This means that it is possible to roll back to this image by running the following command:

                RecoveryAgent.exe -restart

This can be accomplished either through the remote command interface, or via a remote terminal or VNC session.