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3.1.5.6 Policy Administration Comment Update Message Sequencing

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To update the registry-based comment settings in a Group Policy Object using an administrative plug-in, the Policy Comment State (section 3.1.1.5) of that Group Policy Object (GPO) on the Group Policy server MUST be updated with a new Policy Comment Message (section 2.2.3). This MUST be accomplished with the following message sequence:

  1. Remote File Open from Administrative tool to Server: The file name used MUST be "<gpo path>\comment.cmtx", where <gpo path> is one of the following:

    • The user-scoped Group Policy Object path if the GPO's user settings are being updated.

    • The computer-scoped Group Policy Object path if the computer settings are being updated.

      The remote File Open MUST request Exclusive Write permissions and MUST specify that the file is not to be created if it does not exist. If the Open request returns a failure status, the Policy Administration Comment Update Message sequence MUST be terminated.

      A .cmtl file is never created or updated as part of the Policy Administration Comment Update Message Sequencing. Language-specific .cmtl files are manually created and shipped as part of the operating system to provide localization for the comments that describe sample Group Policy Objects.

      When an administrator adds a comment to a GPO, a .cmtx file is created or updated, but no .cmtl is created. To provide language-specific comments, an administrator MUST manually create the .cmtl file in the appropriate language-specific folder and edit the .cmtx manually so that it will refer to the language-specific string resources in the .cmtl file. For steps about manually localizing .cmtx files, see Policy Administration Comment Localization Message Sequencing (section 3.1.5.7).

  2. Remote File Write Sequences: The administrative plug-in MUST perform a series of remote file writes to overwrite the contents of the opened comment.cmtx  file with new comments. These writes MUST continue until the entire file is copied or an error is encountered. If an error is encountered, the protocol sequence MUST be terminated.

  3. File Close: The tool MUST then issue a file close operation for all opened files.