HTTP Downloads - Incomplete Package

[nixonc85]

Looking for some advice on what could be the cause of the following... I have setup our Mavericks update .pkg (produced by createOSXInstallPkg) to be cached to our Mac clients ahead of time and then have scoped a self service policy at macs that have cached the package. We recently enabled HTTP on our IIS distribution points and now some of the Macs are not showing a complete package when i compare md5 values of the InstallESD.dmg file within the package.

I half suspect this could be due to the user restarting the Mac during the download but i thought Casper automatically resumes downloads and also wouldn't show the package as being cached until it has downloaded.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Chris

[Caitlin_H]

We use a similar method for caching Adobe products but I have noticed that if the User leaves, restarts their machine or closes is "suddenly" the HTTP download sometimes corrupts. It will show as if complete but fail on install. We have only really had this issue with laptops and because it is a low number of occurrences for us we usually either remove it from the Wait Room and redeploy via policy or we manually install it.

Have you tested it on any machines to replicate the issue or have you noticed if it is primarily laptop users?

[nkalister]

this is common with large non-flat packages (like the ones produced by createOSXInstallPkg) and HTTP downloads. the best way to avoid it is to wrap the pkg in a dmg, and then use jamf's script that runs the pkg after mounting the dmg. Script you need is here:
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProduct.html?id=3&view=scripts