Unable to get a file to install on clients desktops!

[steventhemacman]

Hi,

We have an html file that we want to put on the user's desktop when they login. I have the file on my desktop, I use composer and drop it in there. Create a DMG. Then I create a policy to run at login, and ongoing. I choose the .dmg and choose FUT (and FEU for fun). This used to work, but not it does not. Just stopped working. The log in the policy page says it works fine, but no file appears. Any ideas? I am stumped and the teachers are going to lynch me soon.

Thanks,

Steve

[mm2270]

What happens if you change the policy trigger to something other than Login? Like an every15 or even try installing it manually on a system or two by targeting it via Casper Remote? Something tells me the Login trigger is what's causing it not to work, but I have no actual evidence of that, just a hunch.
Also, what version of the JSS are you running? What's the client OS?

[steventhemacman]

We are running Mac OS 10.8.2 and JSS 8.6.2. I have tried it with Remote and it does the same thing, says it completes OK and nothing happens (i.e. no file on desktop of logged in user). I can try and change the trigger and see what happens.

[nessts]

have you connected to a machine and used a terminal to ls the file? are the permissions such that a user cannot read them? thus preventing the Finder from showing them to the user? Just a thought.

[mm2270]

I had the same thought as Todd, Perhaps the file is just invisible to the user. The policy should be setting the perms on the file properly, but perhaps something isn't working there. I would run a

ls -al /Users/username/Desktop

on one of the affected systems to see if the file shows in the list.

[steventhemacman]

I just did that and there is no file there to ls. Good idea though.

[steventhemacman]

I just did that and there is no file there to ls. Good idea though.

[mm2270]

Well, the other possibility is that something with the combination of JSS 8.6.2 and OS X 10.8.2 is broken in regards to FEU. We're only running JSS 8.6.0. Once we get around to updating our dev environment to 8.6.2 I can try testing it. But someone else with the same setup as you may be able to confirm or deny if this is the issue.

Other than that, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be working. :(

[steventhemacman]

I am completely baffled by it.

[mm2270]

A few other thoughts.

First off, open a ticket if you haven't already with your JAMF buddy to see if they have any ideas.

Second, in the interim until its resolved, to avoid being lynched by a mob of teachers, you could try an alternate approach.

For example-
Take your html link and drop it into /Users/Shared/yourHTMLlink.webloc
Drag into Composer and build it as a PKG, not a DMG

From here, you can try one of the following options-
Create a post install script in the Composer package to copy the link into each local users Desktop folder. Something like this (thrown together in a minute, so don't trust that it just works!)

#!/bin/sh

localUsers=`dscl . list /Users UniqueID | awk '$2 > 500 {print $1}'`

for u in $localUsers; do
    cp /Users/Shared/yourHTMLlink.webloc /Users/$u/Desktop/
done

Alternately. you could just create a link to the html file and keep it in /Users/Shared/ and run it as a login policy. For example-

ln -s /Users/Shared/yourHTMLlink.webloc /Users/$3/Desktop/yourHTMLlink

And of course you could do a combination, dropping the file into /Users/Shared. then having a post install script create the symlink into each local home folder.

At least one of these should get the file to the desktops and stop the lynching! :)

[SamF]

Steve- By chance are you using network home accounts? There is a known issue in versions 8.6 and later of the jamf binary that prevent the FEU option from correctly populating network home accounts. The current workaround is to install version 8.52 of the binary and prevent it from updating during a regular checkin. I encourage you to open a support ticket and your Account Manager can provide additional details about how to implement the workaround if you're using network home accounts.

[steventhemacman]

Will download 8.52. and try Sam's fix and let you know...thanks!

[donmontalvo]

Kind of a twist on @mm2270 is suggesting, weblinks are flat files, should be easy to deploy using a PKG installer that puts test.webloc in /tmp and loops through all existing local home directories and the User Template:

$ cat test.webloc 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>URL</key>
    <string>http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Looping postflight script (something tells me the script gurus can make this a whole lot shorter!):

#!/bin/sh
#
# Copy to User Template and set root:wheel ownership

/usr/bin/ditto /tmp/test.webloc /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Desktop/test.webloc
/usr/sbin/chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Desktop/test.webloc

# Copy to existing user directories and set ownership and permissions.

for i in $(/bin/ls /Users | sed -e '/Shared/d' -e '/Deleted Users/d' -e '/.localized/d'
-e '/.DS_Store/d' -e '/.com.apple.timemachine.supported/d' -e '/Adobe/d' -e '/Library/d');

do

/usr/bin/ditto /tmp/test.webloc /Users/$i/Desktop/
/usr/sbin/chown -R $i:staff /Users/$i/Desktop/

done

exit 0

We never use DMG format, since we need every package to be double-clickable by Help Desk, Desktop Support, etc...so we loop the heck out of stuff in PKG format...

Don

[talkingmoose]

Are you using any sort of directory service such as Active Directory or Open Directory? If so, you'll need to enable a preference in Casper before FEU will work.

Have a look at this: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=4600