Strange Behavior of Working Enterprise Bundle

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sigsegv

Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2020 9:33 am

Post by sigsegv » Fri Oct 28, 2022 3:02 pm
Howdy!

I'm trying to build a new Viscosity pkg file for distribution from our MDM. I'm following these directions: https://www.sparklabs.com/support/kb/ar ... ences-mac/. This is my first time building this package. My predecessor created the previous ones.

I followed James' well-written directions on the linked page above and produced a new pkg file. Wanting to do a "clean"-ish install test (and since I don't have a good test setup at home), I I completely uninstalled Viscosity from my laptop, then opened the pkg file. Click, click, click, put in my admin user's credentials, then it exited successfully. The problem: no Viscosity.app was installed. As far as I could tell, nothing was installed. (None of the items listed in the uninstall directions were there.)

Sure that I messed something up building the new package, I figured I'd install the 1.10.2 pkg from our MDM. Up to now, I've never used our standard Viscosity pkg file, opting for the dmg file and my configs instead, but I needed to figure out what I did wrong. I told the MDM to install Viscosity. The policy that runs the Viscosity 1.10.2 pkg file ran. The logs on the MDM said that the installer reported a successful run, but when I checked on the laptop, there was no sign of Viscosity again. I pulled a copy of the pkg file from the MDM and ran it locally, but no difference.

I verified on the MDM that all of our Viscosity installs are 1.10.2, so I know the pkg is working. This makes me believe that this is something misbehaving on my laptop. Eventually, I discovered that these installers actually are doing something: the Preconfigure directory from the pkg gets installed in the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Viscosity directory of the user who runs the pkg installer, but that's all I can find. No sign of the helper tool being installed either.

Any idea why the pkg file seems to be (successfully) exiting out before it's done fully installing everything? This is running on macOS 12.6.1 on an Intel MBP.

James

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Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:27 pm

Post by James » Sun Oct 30, 2022 2:22 am
Hi sigsegv,

I recommend you try running your installer on a fresh copy of macOS (such as in a virtual machine) and see whether the behaviour differs. By default a macOS installer package will attempt to locate an existing copy of Viscosity, and if it finds one it will "upgrade" that copy. If you're testing your installer on the same machine you're using to make the bundle, it might be finding the Viscosity application bundle in your template and "upgrading" that instead of installing a new copy to /Applications.

You can find some instructions on how to find other copies of Viscosity (using the same approach the installer would use) at: https://www.sparklabs.com/support/kb/ar ... -bundle-id

It is possible to turn off this behaviour by editing the installer project in the Packages application and removing any locators:
http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/documentation/Packages/en/Package_Payload.html#4

If you're seeing the same issue on a fresh install of macOS, then I'd say the Viscosity application bundle probably isn't being bundled with the installer (or it has whacky permissions). I'd recommend downloading a fresh copy from our website, and ensure that it's placed in the correct location in the installer template.

Cheers,
James
Web: https://www.sparklabs.com
Support: https://www.sparklabs.com/support
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