is there a way to remove a PKG that was pushed out

[DDeleon]

Hello JAMF nation,

I have goofed once again and I turn to you guys for help. I accidentally pushed a pkg out to the enitre company and I'm trying to remove it. I can see the check box to " allow the package to be removed" and I re-indexed the package and I honestly do not know how to proceed.

any help would truly be appreciated

[wdpickle]

Can you run a policy to delete it? Try it first on a machine that can take getting blown away.

[Josh_Smith]

Can you provide details about what was pushed out? Was it a vendor package, a package you made, DMG/PKG? Were there any scripts that ran (as part of the package) or was the package just laying down files?

If you aren't sure what was in the package you can use Suspicious Package to take a closer look.

[DDeleon]

I will try that wdpickle, thank you

Mr.Smith it was a color calibration software PKG called color munki.

[r0blee]

How about creating a smart computer group with the criteria to check if that app is installed.

You could set up a policy to uninstall that package. The target for the policy would be the smart group you setup previously and you could set the policy to run only once per computer and to run at either startup, login or recurring check in to make sure you capture all the machines.

Hopefully that makes sense and helps.

-Rob

[Chris_Hafner]

These are all good things to do. However, one thing you should know. Indexing a .pkg does nothing. It's available as a check box and Casper Admin will do a whole lot of "something" if you ask it to, but functionally it does nothing. If you index a .dmg you will have the option to uninstall whatever's been put together in that (so long as you also use the "allow package to be uninstalled" checkbox (also, awkwardly worded) ! Why it's there for .pkgs I have no idea, nor has anyone that I've ever talked to from JAMF. However, if anyone knows something about it that I don't I would be very interested to learn! Sure it's a common UI element, but why allow it to look like it's doing something when you index a .pkg? By the way, this is NOT a snarky comment! I would really love to know! I've always hoped that I was missing something but...

[bpavlov]

@Chris_Hafner Perhaps @john.miller or @amanda.wulff might have some insight on that. Very curious indeed.

[Chris_Hafner]

I wait with baited breath! Since we're going to call out the big guns, let's throw @dustydorey on here.

[DDeleon]

Hey guys,
First off I love the JAMF community. I can always reach out to all of you and get proper answers and the right direction as to where to begin to find answers.

So now the update. I guess you can't uninstall a .PKG properly. Even after indexing. My work around was I took a new computer and installed that color munki software then I used composer to take a snap shot. Once that completed I took the same computer and manually deleted the files and took a snap shot again. With that I created a .dmg and use that dmg to create a policy and with that I was able to remove the software from all the computers I had originally pushed it out too.

I hope this helps and again thank you JAMF nation community for helping this Noob out!

Darwin

[Chris_Hafner]

@DDeleon Good to hear. In the future, keep your composer "work directory" somewhere you can easily get at. If you made the original .pkg with composer you could simply re-launch it and the the software out as a .dmg instead. I tend to use a local file server so I can simply launch composer from any machine and point it there.

[Chris_Hafner]

Or even better @mm2270 (No offense all)

[john_miller]

None taken, @Chris_Hafner !

Let me take a crack at it, but first want to address the problem and then some of the product things that are weird (like indexing PKGs).

@DDeleon, one method might be to use Composer to create a DMG of the PKG that was created. With this, you can upload to your CasperShare, index with Casper Admin, then run the policy to remove that piece of software. Effectively, indexing creates the list of files that get touched in the installation so that the JSS can remove those files. It's the list that the binary uses to actually remove. The odd part is that you'd have to have it as a DMG so that it can create that list and remove it. There may be other ways here, like uninstalling with pkgutil, but those are not as straightforward either.

Regarding why the Casper Suite has it for PKGs, it's really there to cover DMGs. As mentioned, it doesn't have an affect on PKGs, and is something we could remove from the interface there. Sorry for the confusion.

@mm2270 or @amanda.wulff may have some more color to add there, or some advice as well.

Thanks!

[Chris_Hafner]

Thanks @john.miller! This is one of the prime reasons I fell in love with the Casper Suite and then JAMF. Easy un-installers! Oh, and being able to have this kind of access to such expertise at all levels!