As a person who has been involved in TCM since about 1996, I was very interested to see if I could find a way of getting BigFix to deploy SPBs (Software Package Blocks) which are the container files for Tivoli’s software delivery.
So here are a couple blogs I put together on how to get this to work.
Using Tivoli Software Package Blocks in BigFix Enterprise Server v8 – Part 1
Using Tivoli Software Package Blocks in BigFix Enterprise Server v8 – Part 2
Just keep in mind that this was a test that worked for a limited set of SPBs (3 to be exact) and would need to be further tested. The methods used are sound as this is the way that IBM was using SPBs in some other products.
We are actually working on integrating SPBs into BigFix and our implementation is very similar to yours (although we will incorporate the changes automatically in our new software distribution components and not require manual editing).
You will have to be careful with the versions of the disconnected command line. There are many instances of issues with the versions. From what I have seen some of the latest 4.3.1 versions seem to be ok with the older SPBs, but not the other way around
I know there are some people out there that still have packages from 4.2 and 4.2.1, but these should all work fine with the 4.3.1 version.
One thing I was going to look at was the bundle that is used with TPM as this is pretty much the same method that IBM used for it.
Just wanted to throw the idea out to see if anyone could use it until it is officially supported by IBM.
