Solved! - mpkg fails to install using Imaging, but OK when using Casper Remote

I did some testing and verified that Office 2011 won't install using
On 10/29/10 11:31 AM, "Smith, William" <William.Smith at merrillcorp.com> wrote:
Casper Imaging unless the package is set to install after reboot.

I also tested this with InstaDMG, but I was surprised to find it installs
Office 2011 without any issues even though it's installing to a disk image
and not to the boot disk.

After digging into the Installer packages for Office 2011, RDC and
Messenger, I see this snippet of JavaScript code checking to make sure the
target volume is "/":

function TargetVolumeMountpointIsRoot()
{ var result = false; try { result = my.target.mountpoint == "/"; } catch (e) {}

if (!result) { my.result.type = 'Fatal'; } return result;
}

The Office 2008 Installer package does not have this check.

I've reported this issue to Microsoft. Since Casper has a mechanism in
place to deal with this situation and since InstaDMG works (for some
reason) I doubt this will get much priority unless we can identify other
imaging systems this may affect.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

Interesting!

I'm going to do some testing myself but if the packages were made to be
installed on the boot volume only then I'd consider this a bug worth
reporting to Microsoft. Nothing in any of these installers requires a
reboot of the system or even a logout, let alone installing to the boot
drive.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

We missed the opportunity to get into the Microsoft beta for Microsoft Office 2011. I'm sure some folks on this Casper list were involved. Since the NDA has been lifted, I wanted to ask if deployment testing was done by any of the beta testers? If so, did the beta testers alert Microsoft about this issue? What was their response?
"Smith, William" <William.Smith at merrillcorp.com wrote:

Thanks,
Don

Microsoft isn't the only company to have done this. Sophos also comes to mind, and to the point you cant rename their installer. Why else do you think the install after reboot functionality exists in the JSS, aside from Adobe updaters? I assumed to deal with these types of installers.

This truly is a question since I don't deal in developing much. Is having an installer do a check like that really wrong or against some best practices, that some consider it a bug?

Thanks for digging into it, William.

Craig E

Sophos' reason for this that I've been given is that they create a trusted key between the console and the agent and the agent needs to be running to create the key and initiate the first policy pull from the server. It makes sense what they're doing, but yeah, it's another exception out there.

Sounds odd that 2011 would require this though. In the past, we've always repackaged office anyways to get custom settings in there, but maybe in the future we can look back to their installers and use mcx manifests to set our options. My guess is that somewhere in their installer it's making an assumption, and so they needed to add logic up front due to the assumption on the boot drive...

John
--
John Wetter
Technical Services Manager
Educational Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools
952-988-5373

Good point. I wonder if JSS is able to see the install-to-boot-volume only flag set in a given package. Seems it might since some pkg installers get moved to the post-reboot install queue in Casper imaging. I have to check on Monday, but I seem to remember Microsoft Office 2011 going into the post-reboot queue whether the JSS "install at imaging time" option was enabled or not. We haven't repackaged It yet but I anticipate being able to install without having to be booted to the target volume. I may as well test this week.

Don

** Sent from my iPhone **

Easier to call it a bug and let the developers justify the behavior. Being
On 10/30/10 3:40 PM, "Ernst, Craig S." <ERNSTCS at uwec.edu> wrote:
able to redirect an install or require a boot volume install is a
fundamental part of Apple's Installer application but that's not how
Microsoft is handling this.

The only reason I see for this check is because of fonts. Office 2011
installs a handful of fonts that conflict with Apple's installed fonts. To
avoid the conflict, the Office installer moves the conflicting Apple fonts
to a 'Fonts Disabled' directory. If this were the case, however, I'd block
just this one item in the Installer and not the entire installation.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492