Hi guys,
I am super super new at bigfix, i use it at my new job. I was requested to create an analyses and fixlet to detect if the wireless capability is turned on in the bios and then to be able to turn it on. Is that possible or any ideas how to script it? Ive seen scripts to pull the bios version and thats it. I am not that great at programming, btw. Thanks!!!
My first step in trying to do something with BigFix is determine how I would manually script the change. Then you can try to make BigFix perform the operation.
I second that notion. You will likely need to download and execute a utility provided by your hardware vendor to detect and configure bios settings. Dell and HP both provide utilities for their models, I’m sure other hardware vendors do the same.
The exact solution will likely depend on the manufacturer. Which ones in particular?
There is already content on BigFix.Me for Dell Command Configure which can be used to change BIOS settings on Dell Enterprise Models. Dell Command Monitor can be used to determine the current state as well. You may also be able to write generic relevance that looks for active WiFi as well, which may involve network inspectors, or registry, or plists, or WMI or IOReg.
Exactly this. Get it to work on the command line first. If it isn’t possible to do on the command line at all, then it is unlikely it can be done with BigFix. Once it is working on the command line, and you can document how it works there, then the best way to do this with BigFix can figured out from there, and there is likely an example that is similar out there already that can be tweaked.
To add to what the others have already stated, consider the surrounding pre and post tasks associated with such a change. Include them in your update task or baseline.
For example, in our BIOS update baselines, we clear the BIOS password, suspend BitLocker, and suspend our security software first. The BIOS update or setting change is then applied. Finally post change we do the opposite of the ‘pre’ tasks. We have custom task for each step in our baseline. When we have a new BIOS-related update, we just copy the baseline structure and insert the new change/update into the middle of it.
Interestingly you would need to do some of the steps differently depending on the PC Manufacturer, while suspending BitLocker and security software would be the same, so you could have different baselines for different manufacturers with some shared steps and some different ones.
Yes, correct. The generic surrounding steps are typically vendor agnostic and can also be used with a variety of payloads (firmware update, boot order change, hardware power management, security on USB ports, etc).
You could even make the BIOS update baseline vendor agnostic as well. For example, start the baseline with the generic ‘pre-update’ items, then have multiple BIOS updates for multiple makes and models in separate tasks - each having relevance for model/machine type/manufacturer. Finish the baseline with the ‘post-update’ tasks. Then you could run the baseline against a mixed set of targets.