Group Policy deployment failure

[christrengove]

I have been attempting to test deployment of an installation via Active Directory and Group Policy, and to date have met with no success at all. In an attempt to boil things down to the simplest test, I have tried the following script, which basically just copies a single file to "Program Files".

Code: Select all

Get Common Folder Location System->Program Files Directory into PROGRAMFILES
Set Variable TARGETDIR to $PROGRAMFILES$\minimal
Set Variable SUCCESS to 
if Variable REMOVE Equals TRUE
 Apply Uninstall (get result into variable SUCCESS)
 else
 Install Files C:\Users\Chris\Documents\eula_installaware.txt to $TARGETDIR$
 Apply Install (get result into variable SUCCESS)
end

I have used the Group Policy Wizard to package the installation into an MSI file. When deployed via Active Directory, the installation does not succeed. If I generate a log file, its contents are always just

Code: Select all

<InstallAware>
    <SupportDir>
    </SupportDir>
  <SetupSplash>
    <StubSize>
    </StubSize>
    <StubData>
    </StubData>
    <GlobalLists>
    </GlobalLists>
    <ExtractArchive>
    </ExtractArchive>
  <CachedSupportDir>
  </CachedSupportDir>
</InstallAware>

I get the same log file with more complicated installations as well (and they all fail).

Any suggestions of what may be going wrong would be greatly appreciated. I am using InstallAware 10.10 on Windows 7 (64), and I am testing the Active Directory deployment with a combination of Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows XP (as the client).

[giaviv]

Dear christrengove,

I have a feeling that this has something to do with your network's group policy configuration. Have you been able to install non-InstallAware related setups on your platform using group policy?

[christrengove]

Yes, to make sure that my group policy configuration was working, I have tried with a non-InstallAware setup, and I can deploy the MSI without problem. I have tried "per user" deployment, as well as "per machine" deployment, and both work. But with the InstallAware setup it never works, and when I generate a log file, it is always the same. Incidentally, I am testing with virtual machines, although I can't see why that should make any difference.

Chris Trengove

[christrengove]

It turns out that my testing was being messed up by the issue mentioned in "Silent Build Failure Bug Fix". That is, the installations were failing whenever the "/s" was included. I have now updated my InstallAware installation, and this particular issue is resolved. However, I still have a concern about Group Policy deployment and user privileges, which I will raise in another post.

Chris Trengove

[giaviv]

Dear Chris,

Happy you figured it out - I will follow up on your other post.