It is my first time using Bigfix to install MS Office 2003 on client PCs over our network. I have already created an .MST with the required customization. The .MST is then put into a small mssetup.bat file. When I executed this .bat via action script as a “New Tasks”, it completed successfully within 2 seconds but didn’t actually installing the software.
I have tried running the .bat file mannually on client PC and it was able to install the office software.
If so, the agent likely won’t have access to it because the agent runs as the SYSTEM account. The normal ways to solve this would be to distribute the files to the agent using the software distribution wizard or by enabling the share as a “null session share”.
You will want to select the folder “Z:\MSOffice2003” to distribute and then in the command line in the software distribution wizard, you will want to run:
The folder is compressed and sent to the “Upload” folder in the BigFix Server wwwrootbes folder.
Just looking at it, the syntax looks a little funny… The current working directory is the actionsite or opsite folder and the files exist in the __Download subfolder after they are extracted…
I am not sure if the msiexec would run with the setup.exe… maybe you should edit the line to be:
Make sure the path to the transform is right… after you run the action, you can see the files leftover on the agent in the __Download folder (probably in the BigFix Client subfolder “__BESData\Actionsite” if you are logged in as an administrator).
Finally, I was able to get this Software Deployment thing working except for one last deployment. This is the deployment of a tscconv.msi software. The action script is : -
Command succeeded (evaluated true) continue if {(size of it = 150046 AND sha1 of it = “185279335378bd2a6bb4cb3172155ddc9eb7d84f”) of file “tcscconvmsi.tmp” of folder “__Download”} (fixlet 73)
I have turned on the debug mode of msiexec and installed the tcscconv.msi via Bigfix, the debug log stated that it skipped the “FindRelatedProducts action”, shown as below.
-----Msiexec debug log
MSI (s) (90:14)
17:09:27:969
: Doing action: FindRelatedProducts
17:09:27: INSTALL.
MSI (s) (90:14)
17:09:27:969
: Skipping FindRelatedProducts action: not run in maintenance mode
17:09:27: FindRelatedProducts.
MSI (s) (90:14)
17:09:27:969
: Doing action: AppSearch
17:09:27: FindRelatedProducts. Return= 0。
17:09:27: AppSearch.
Compared to the debug log that I ran the msi installation mannually on the command prompt, in which the installation task completed successfully, the debug log didn’t state any “Skipping FindrelatedProducts action…” and the “FindRelatedProducts. Return=1”.
So, it seems like when I installed via Bigfix, somehow it couldn’t find the related product and therefore stop the installation.
PS:The tcscconv.msi is a standalone msi available from Microsoft. It is for the conversion of Tranditional<-> Simplified Chinese for Office software.