Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.7 update error

Make sure in your policy you check (Force Distribution Points to use AFP/SMB instead of HTTP)

I hope this helps

Patrick Bachuwa
Client Technical Services
Sears Holdings Corporation
Michigan Campus
3000 W. 14 Mile Road
Royal Oak, MI  48073-1717
Phone: 248 637-0350
Patrick.Bachuwa at searshc.com

Thanks Patrick, that did it! I wonder why this is so? Is this a bug in JSS 7.31?

Thanks!
Don

imac01:~ admin$ sudo jamf policy -trigger officeupdate
Password:
Checking for policies triggered by "officeupdate"...
Gathering Policy Information from https://xser01:8443/...
Executing Policy Install Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.7 update... Mounting afp://xser01.ddcdsm.private/CasperShare to /Volumes/CasperShare... Copying Office 2008 12.2.7 Update.mpkg... Installing Office 2008 12.2.7 Update.mpkg... Succesfully installed Office 2008 12.2.7 Update.mpkg. Unmounting file server... Running Recon... Retrieving Inventory Preferences from https://xser01:8443/... Locating Hard Drive Information... Locating Hardware Information (Mac OS X 10.6.4)... Locating Applications (Detailed)...
2010-10-26 07:58:16.644 jamf[39145:1707] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
2010-10-26 07:58:35.250 jamf[39145:1707] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary. Executing Unix Applications... Locating Receipts... Locating iPhone records... Submitting data to https://xser01:8443/... <computer_id>19</computer_id> Submitting log to https://xser01:8443/...
imac01:~ admin$

It has always been an issue for me, since I started deploying the updates a year ago this month.

I worked with JAMF and that's what we came up with.

They should probably post this if they haven't already.

Patrick Bachuwa
Client Technical Services
Sears Holdings Corporation
Michigan Campus
3000 W. 14 Mile Road
Royal Oak, MI  48073-1717
Phone: 248 637-0350
Patrick.Bachuwa at searshc.com

Agreed. It'd be nice if we could set it to be checked by default, too.

Off topic a little:

This specific update has had wide reports of problems for Entourage. Test
it first and deploy it carefully.

"Entourage crashes after updating to 12.2.7"
<http://www.officeformachelp.com/2010/10/entourage-crashes-after-updating-t
o-12-2-7/>

--

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

Hi folks ­ I followed this hint from October w/r/t the Office 2008 mpkg
updaters and set a policy to install on a test machine with the Force AFP
option set, but am still seeing the same error that Don had:

[...]

2010-12-09 22:58:36.177 installer[54439:5c03] Package
/Library/Application Support/JAMF/Downloads/Office 2008 12.2.8
Update.mpkg/Contents/Packages/Office2008_en_quit_cmb_12.2.8.combo.pkg uses a
deprecated pre-10.2 format (or uses a newer format but is invalid). installer: Package name is Office 2008 12.2.8 Update installer: Upgrading at base path / installer: The upgrade failed (The Installer could not install the
software because there was no software found to install.) Unmounting file server...

Any other ideas? When I tried packaging up 12.2.7 installed over my 12.2.3,
got all kinds of weird errors and crashes. JSS 7.31 and all clients running
same.

TIA.

--
Pete Curtner
Senior IT Manager

G2 USA

350 W. Mart Center Dr.
Suite 1212
Chicago, IL 60654
T +1 312 229 8411
C +1 718 249 7047
www.g2.com

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:59:56 -0500

Hi Pete,

We generally repackage the whole suite when updating Office due to the updates being hit & miss.

Regards,
Ben Toms
IT Support Analyst GREY Group
The Johnson Building, 77 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8JS
T: +44 (0) 20-3037-3819 |
Main: +44 (0) 20 3037 3000 | IT Helpdesk: +44 (0) 20 3037 3883

Hi folks ­ I've finally got a successful method for using a policy to deploy
the 12.2.8 update mpkg, by doing everything command-line:

mkdir /Volumes/mountpoint;

mount_afp -o nobrowse "afp://username:password@server/mountpoint"
/Volumes/mountpoint/;

hdid /Volumes/mountpoint/path/to/Office2008-1228UpdateEN.dmg;

jamf install -package Office 2008 12.2.8 Update.mpkg -path
/Volumes/Office 2008 12.2.8 Update/ -target /;

diskutil unmount /Volumes/Office 2008 12.2.8 Update/;

jamf unmountServer -mountPoint mountpoint;

There are undoubtedly plenty of ways to do the above but this has worked on
every test machine.. scoped and set to startup, once per computer, confirmed
as working on 10.4-10.6.

Being Office, I also set the policy to update prebindings and repair
permissions, JIC.

HTH & Happy Holidays.

--
Pete Curtner
Sr. IT Manager

G2 USA

350 W. Mart Center Dr.
Suite 1212
Chicago, IL 60654
T +1 312 229 8411
C +1 718 249 7047
www.g2.com

Hi Pete,

We haven't had any issues pushing the 12.2.8 update (we skipped 12.2.7). We force AFP, and we also cache the pkg first, then run the install. Seems like bigger packages work with fewer issues this way. We had problems using HTTP, and even using AFP without caching (on anything bigger than 10 or 20 megs).

Haven't yet packaged up the Microsoft Office 2011 14.0.2 update, or the Communicator 13.1.0 update yet. Waiting for someone to post their experiences. :)

Thanks,
Don

The MS updaters are pretty flaky, not to mention I have to use http downloads (AFP not available/possible), so I merely snapshot all of the updaters. I am just careful not to deploy portions/fragments of files - i.e. I'll push out the whole .app bundle rather than just some components (have found this not to work so well/reliably in the past). The advantage here is that the snapshot-created updaters always work, unlike the MS ones...