iTunes - Installation Error - Common?

[josaxo]

Hi All - It seems whenever I deploy certain packages, namely iTunes, Flash, or Java (note, I use the vendor .pkg) - a small percentage of my machines generate the following error:

Event log from the policy:

/usr/sbin/jamf is version 8.71 Executing Policy iTunes v11.0.4... Mounting smb://X.X.X.X/projectsE/jss_dedp01 to /Volumes/jss_dedp01 1... Mounting smb://X.X.X.X/deptshares$/JSS_USDP01 to /Volumes/JSS_USDP01... Copying iTunes 11.0.4.pkg... Installing iTunes 11.0.4.pkg... Installation failed. The installer reported: installer: Error the package path specified was invalid: '/Library/Application Support/JAMF/Downloads/iTunes 11.0.4.pkg'. Unmounting file server... Running Recon...

Is anyone aware of a root cause? I've attempted to re-run the installation, but it generates the same error.
Thanks.

[mm2270]

Just curious, but why are you deploying iTunes? That comes standard with every Mac, so unless you somehow ripped it out of your base OS image and now need to push it out, I don't understand why you'd need to do this. If you're talking about an iTunes update, then I would urge you to find some way to spin up an internal SUS to point your Macs to for any Apple related updates, like iTunes. You'll likely have better luck deploying those updates that way. You don't need much. Just a Mac mini with JAMF's NetSUS appliance installed in VirtualBox should be enough, unless you have a very large amount of Macs you're managing. The latter 2 items are free, but you'll need to acquire the hardware. You can also look at spinning it up on some existing Windows or Linux machines.

As for your error, we've seen this on occasion ourselves, but we're still looking into causes on our end. In our case at least it may be related to our Anti-virus software. Seems that we needed to add an exclusion in the product to the path of the JAMF directory and all sub-folders (/Library/Application Support/JAMF/) It may be interfering with installs in some cases.
You could also look at the AV angle, assuming you have some AV product on your Macs, but outside of that, try caching the package down in a policy and check to make sure its actually arriving on the target system. It sounds like the download is incomplete from the error you posted. 'package path specified was invalid' means it can't find an actual package at the location specified to install. That could mean several things, such as "not there at all", or there but corrupted.

Also, is your Casper depository on a Windows server or something else?

[nkalister]

hey mm2270- which AV package are you using?

[mm2270]

Hey Nick, we use McAfee's products here. A/V (AntiMalware) on all OS X versions.

[josaxo]

We leveraged an Internet SUS for a period of time, but decided to manage OS X/ iTunes / Java updates via JAMF instead. The idea was to reduce complexity and have a one stop shop for patching. It has actually worked very well so far, except for a some minor hiccups we experience on a few machines.

We use Symantec Endpoint Protection v11.0.x in our environment - I will need to double check to see if it is causing any issues on certain machines.

Thanks for the reply.
JS

[dpertschi]

Mike, I'm in the same boat; occasional errors exactly as noted above and we're using McAfee as well. AV is my standard poor performance scapegoat normally, just didn't consider it in this case.

If you come to a solid conclusion that excluding the JAMF folder from AV scans resolves these occasional install failures, please post back. Likewise, I will try to test the same.

Arguing with my Security department that this is a good idea will need plenty of proof.