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Alternative Download location doesn't work for Mac clients

I want to install Adobe InDesign on a computer. I have a .zip file which contains a .pkg .
My K1000 is a VM and version 5.5.90548
My K1000 clients are 5.5.30275
I have reproduced this on MacOS 10.7.3, 10.8.5, 10.9.3

  1. Install Adobe InDesign manually on test machine, then run inventory on it.
  2. Find newly discovered InDesign Software in Inventory - upload 0 byte "dummy" file to this item in the inventory.
  3. In Managed Installations, I make a new one and pick the newly discovered software with "dummy" file.
  4. I select Configure Manually and enter in the command : sudo unzip IndesignCS6.zip && sudo installer -pkg IndesignCS6.pkg -target /
  5. I select Use Alternate Download and enter in the path  : \\server.domain.edu\Software\2014\ZippedPackages\IndesignCS6.zip
  6. On my test Mac client, I calculate the MD5 checksum of the .zip file on the network share and verify the credentials to be used will work.
  7. The rest are default options - Execute anytime, deploy order 10, Always deploy...etc.

The Managed Installation shows that I have 2 machines to deploy to (the ones I selected). I turn on debug logging on these clients, and force an inventory update on each. The Installation does not succeed.

kdeploy.log shows these four lines each time I try to inventory the system to trigger the installation of this zipped package:

[Tue Jun 17 15:01:07 2014] GetFilenameFromReplicationURL: postpended hash not found
[Tue Jun 17 15:01:08 2014] [CopyFile] Failed to open source file /tmp/mntPtbBwfWi/2014/ZippedPackages/IndesignCS6.zip, (No such file or directory)
[Tue Jun 17 15:01:08 2014] DownloadSMBFile: unable to copy file from: '/tmp/mntPtbBwfWi/2014/ZippedPackages/IndesignCS6.zip' to: '/Library/Application Support/Dell/KACE/data/downloads/547/IndesignCS6.zip' Error: No such file or directory

Sooo.... I've double checked my MD5 checksum; I am calculating the exact file that I am telling K1000 to install from a Mac per K1000 documentation. I double checked my credentials used for the SMB share, and verified that they allow me to connect to this SMB share from the client. I've double checked my path and case of each file/directory. Every machine I've tried this on gives me more or less the same error, only the /tmp/mnt232klkj32 is different each time. I have KACE support involved, but so far they seem to think that this should just work.

Has anyone out there got the Alternative Download location function to work with Managed Installs?


Asked 10 years ago 3273 views
6 Comments   [ + ] Show comments
  • We only used alt location during our eval for a windows software. Never tried it on a Mac, we typically just use the client drop folder for large installs (just did Xcode yesterday, 9gb) and it worked like a charm. - Jbr32 10 years ago
  • I have not used the alternate download location on OS X but I wonder if you need to specify the path as smb://server/share/file since that is how you would access the file manually. - chucksteel 10 years ago
    • I've tried this also. Errors with this include "DownloadSMBFile: Failed to mount smb share" :( - bknorr 10 years ago
      • Curious- did you ever figure this out? I am trying to push CC out via alt download. - Jbr32 10 years ago
  • Out of curiosity what is the gain you get from using alt download? - gpalau 10 years ago
  • We are somewhat constrained by space. The adobe cc full install package is 14gb and I have two of them. Not sure about the PC package. - Jbr32 10 years ago
  • I got the download to work, can't get the install to work yet - Jbr32 10 years ago
    • What was the fix for the download? - chucksteel 10 years ago
      • For the alt download, I just keyed in the path to the server as \\servername\somePath\someFile.tar.gz
        Keyed in my AD creds without the domain and it worked. The problem I am having is with the install line, I am passing two commands:
        1) untar - which works
        2) the install, which does not appear to work. I have played around with using the full path and a relative path. Neither seem to work. Any suggestions?

        sudo tar zxvf LabDistroNOUPdates.tar.gz && sudo installer /Library/Application Support/Dell/KACE/data/downloads/34313/LabDistroNOupdates/Build/LabDistroNOupdates_Install.pkg -target /

        or
        sudo tar zxvf LabDistroNOUPdates.tar.gz && sudo installer LabDistroNOupdates/Build/LabDistroNOupdates_Install.pkg -target / - Jbr32 10 years ago
      • I zip the installer so my command line looks like this:
        unzip -o package.pkg.zip && installer -pkg package.pkg -target /

        Before the 6.0 release I didn't have to use the -o flag on the unzip command to overwrite files, but now it's necessary, is there a similar flag for tar? Also, the AMPAgent and related processes (KDeploy, etc) run in the root context so there's no need to use sudo on the commands. - chucksteel 10 years ago
  • Thanks bknorr, we got our installer working. Turns out, we needed to be more precise with the case sensitivity as you indicated. Thank you for the details. - Jbr32 10 years ago

Answers (1)

Answer Summary:
See bknorr's step by step below.
Posted by: bknorr 10 years ago
Purple Belt
0
Based on my experience, the K1000 is very picky about syntax. Not all characters work, either.

My best results so far:

I have an AFP/SMB share that has my .zip file.

  1. Install your package to a Mac and inventory that Mac. Find the new software in the inventory, and upload a 0 byte file that matches the filename EXACTLY which you want to have on an alternate download location. In my case, I made a file AdobePhotoshopCS6_Install.pkg.zip of 0 bytes and uploaded it.
  2. Make a new Managed Installation item in K1000 and use your newly inventoried software with its 0 byte file.
  3. Installation Command [configure manually]: sudo unzip AdobePhotoshopCS6_Install.pkg.zip && sudo installer -pkg AdobePhotoshopCS6_Install.pkg -target /
    1. At this point, I originally had a .zip file with spaces. I don't know how K1000 passes spaces with backslash escape characters, but it doesn't work as expected. Simplify your filenames as much as possible!
    2. Note that the manual script doesn't need full paths, at least in our case it doesn't. On a Mac, the managed installation directories will be in /Library/Application Support/Dell/KACE/data/downloads/123 (some number). 
  4. Alternate Download Location: \\server.domain.edu\ZippedPackages\AdobePhotoshopCS6_Install.pkg.zip
    1.  In my environment, my share ended up to be case sensitive when working with K1000 and Macs. YMMV.
  5. Alternate Checksum: 5f2bc320913f12beb4888990292e922e 
    1. Calculate the MD5 on a Mac that has the same share mapped as you'll be using.
  6. Alternate User Password: Don't use a password with special characters- I did and ended up getting constant errors. In our case, numbers and letters are all we use...a lot of them. 
Obviously, test your user/pass with your SMB share from a client that will be using it to make sure that part works first. When troubleshooting, we had to mess around with case sensitivity, spaces in filenames (even when escaped - we had both the .pkg.zip and .pkg fail when they had escaped spaces), password characters, share syntax (Windows friendly vs. Mac friendly), and installation command syntax. Kace seems to be dumb when it comes to how it passes your stuff from the K1000 interface to the actual .sh scripts which are executed on the machine. This setup works for us on a 5.5.30275 appliance and Mac OS 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 clients.
 
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