Jamf App Catalog Install Failures

duggu19
New Contributor

Hey everyone,

Having an issue with jamf app catalog installations. Some machines just seem to randomly not want to install the app. These machines are very similar, it's a computer lab, but one machine will install successfully and its neighbor will fail.

My question is how do I investigate this further plus all I see in the console is that it failed with no real information and also has anyone else experienced this and was able to fix it

3 REPLIES 3

AJPinto
Honored Contributor II

Honestly we would need a lot more information than this. If JAMF Policy logs don't have what you are looking for, check the install.log. If you can watch the package fail that would be better, macOS generates a metric ton of logs most of them useless so knowing your time stamp makes things a lot easier.

 

Beyond poking around, no two devices are the same. You want to test this in a clean environment. Wipe both devices and install the same version of macOS, and test with two totally identical devices. You could have a conflicting application installed or setting configured on one of the devices causing it to fail, rule all of that out first.

julienvs
New Contributor III

Same here.

The problem with this scenario @AJPinto is that this is happening with Jamf App Catalog and there's no such thing as a policy and logs.

I'm wondering how we can debug more.

AJPinto
Honored Contributor II

There are always logs, even if you cant see them.

- Check the install.log on the Mac. Anytime anything installs or attempts to install on a Mac, there will be information in the install.log about it.

- Check the JAMF logs on the Mac. JAMF has its own logs on macOS, different logs are in different files.

- Watch the JAMF waiting room and see what happens. If it does not look like anything is happening in the install.log and JAMF logs, watch the JAMF Waiting Room. Do you see the source files coming down? If you dont, you are dealing with a network problem.

- Check the JAMF Server Logs and enable verbose logging. The JAMF Server logs a bit in settings, you may need to enable verbose logs. Look for the host you are testing with to show up in the logs rather than a specific error. Many errors are nondescript and look like random API calls with server error numbers like 404 and 500.

- Ultimately, open a ticket with JAMF. If there is literally nothing, all you can do is open a ticket with JAMF.

 

One of the biggest perks of SaaS is also one of its biggest cons. You don’t have to maintain the hostOS, but you also dont have access to the hostOS to see what is going on. However JAMF does have access to the hostOS on the server to check the logs. We are paying for JAMF to support this, make them support it. A feature request for more visible logging would not be a bad idea either.