Search for client devices

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This article describes how to have NoTouch Center search for client devices, connecting them to your NoTouch Center installation. A more comfortable way is to create a DNS host name or alias named "tcmgr" pointing to your NoTouch Center installation host - see tcmgr; use this guide here only if you don't want to or can't change your DNS. There are other methods as well: Short introduction (NTC)#Connect clients and NoTouch Center

This search procedure only works on devices that are not associated with a management software or have "Allow to be controlled by new management console" inside the RCMD parameters turned on. In other words, if you for example move from a PoC to a productive setup, please set the parameter before searching from the new instance or set the NoTouch Center URL parameter in the client's Services parameters explicitly.

Search for client devices

We assume that you have logged in to NoTouch Center and have a browser window showing NoTouch Center on your monitor in front of you.

Click on "Manage" in the main menu in the upper left region of the browser window, then click on "Tools" in the left bar below the main menu, and then click on "Scan" on the just appeared tab names.

Center-en-ToolsScan.jpg

Now enter either an IP address or a full search range, meaning beginning and ending address. NoTouch Center will contact every single address in this region and ask any device found running NoTouch OS to contact NoTouch Center. The clients will indeed wait a random amount of time (at most half a minute) to avoid hundreds of devices to contact NoTouch Center at the same time, and then contact NoTouch Center, which is a standard Announce procedure.

Center-en-FoundClients.jpg

Devices that did contact NoTouch Center are shown in this view - this is the same content as the "not assigned" icon in the tree view on the left would show. If you have set the "tcmgr" DNS name or alias to point to your NoTouch Center installation, your clients will show up automatically. If you use the NComputing Virtual Appliance, clients that are in the same subnet will also show up here automatically.

Just connecting NoTouch Center and clients will not lead to changing client configuration. Client devices need to be added into a group to be configured, which may happen manually or automatically.

Double-check on the client

NoTouch OS shows information about both received client actions (such as "search") and the pull-based announce. It displays date and time of last action, status and external information.

On a machine running NoTouch, open the local configuration, log in, and click on "Information". Scroll down until you see the "NoTouch Center" section like here:

OS-en-AnnounceInformation.jpg

This screenshot shows us that the client received an action at 5:31pm that told it to consider http://192.168.2.7:8080/ as its new management console ("last received action") - this was the search packet that was sent from above. It also shows us that just one second later, it successfully connected to https://192.168.2.7:8443/. Unless otherwise specified, the system tries to connect with HTTPS even if a plain HTTP URL is sent. This ensures compatibility for existing customers but also allows for maximum available security without breaking anything.

Troubleshooting and further information

More information is contained in this article: Announce