ASI Security tips up our customers

  • Article

When we decided to retire the HCT, DDK, DCT and IFS and replace them with one kit, the WDK, on of the main focuses was moving the driver development community to the same tools we use internally to develop and test drivers. The benefits of this strategy are terrific. First, we not have to invest resources to produce tools and tests for our partners to use, we just provide to them the tools and tests we developed for ourselves. The value we’re providing as a result is tremendous. Tools such as the DTM and ASI are provided free and the test content we’re able to provide is of better quality, more flexible and there will be more of it.

One downside of this strategy is the fact that some of these tools have features that provide little or no value to our external customers. Many of these features have been removed. Some are tripping our customers up. In particular, I’ve noticed the security features of ASI are causing some problems. Internally keeping the Windows builds secure is very important. Our customers may not hold Windows build in the same regard since it’s not their IP. Between now and RC I’ll be looking for ways to eliminate the things that have caused our customers problems. For now, here are the top issues I’ve seen and how to work with them.

  1. Permission on the ASI shares: The images share is the one that causes the most problems. If your server is in an environment where everyone who has access to the server can be trusted to use the Windows builds appropriately just give the Everyone group read permission to the share. This will eliminate most problems. If you’re still having problems, it’s probably not ASI. Check things such as firewalls and ensure that file sharing is enabled. If you can’t browse to the shares, ASI will not work. Alternatively, if you already have shares setup to make Windows builds available, just continue to use those.
  2. Registering the clients: Each client needs to be registered with the server. Any user who is a member of the ASIUsers group can register a client. The ASI setup creates this group and adds the ASIUser user to the group automatically. What is the password on the ASI User account, I don’t know. Just use Computer Management to set the password to something you can remember.