Deployment Solution Package Server components fail to install or work properly. KNOWN ISSUE with Windows 7

Products

• Deployment Solution

Issue/Introduction

After installing the DSPS site components, you are unable to capture and/or deploy images.

The most common symptom to see is a failure to capture images, and the most common log error includes security of some sort (e.g. 401 in IIS or an incorrect XML response which is really a security error).  Other symptoms may include indications that the image file can not be created if it already exists (which is really a generic error and means nothing) and a failure to actually create the Deploy subfolder in IIS under Altiris\PS, though the components appear to have installed correctly (this is a common error with Windows 7 systems).  Even if the Altiris\PS\Deploy folder exists though, imaging may still fail, all for security reasons.

This is a "KNOWN ISSUE" for Windows 7 Site Servers, but occurs occasionally on other supported platforms including Windows 2003 and 2008.

 

Verification Method:

Try running the following in a web browser against your site server, substituting your valid SS data in at the beginning:

http://YourSiteServer.YourDomain.com:80/Altiris/PS/Deployment/DSPSPackageInfo.aspx?xml=<request><CreatePackageFolder><inputFolderGuid>{D91A85BB-BEC4-4C20-82D0-3D9116355555}</inputFolderGuid></CreatePackageFolder></request>

There should be a valid 2-3 line XML response.  If you get a message about invalid XML format, check your typing.  If it's correct, then you just ran into this security issue.  If you got a valid response though, browse to the file system under Altiris\Altiris agent\PackageDelivery, and see if the new GUID folder was created.  Test again if you want by changing the last 4 or 5 digits of the GUID and it should work again (I sort by created date).  When it's working, this package is created.  When not, well, obviously nothing shows up.

Environment

Deployment Solution 7.5 General Availability (GA), 7.5 Hot Fix (HF) 1, 7.5 HF2, 8.x.

Cause

Unknown. We only know it's security / permissions related.

Resolution

If you are using Windows 7 site servers, we strongly recommend getting a Windows 2008 site server instead that you can use.

If you are seeing these symptoms with Windows 2003 or 2008, we recommend you contact Support.  These should be working.

Alternatives to calling support:

• Try another site server.  If you have 2003/2008 site servers, normally these work just fine.  See if another is working, or possibly build a new one fresh, preferably with very few GPO's applied.  Because we know this is a security issue, removing custom security you may have in place may remove the problem.
• If you're using Windows 7 site servers, get a 2003/2007 site server.
• If you have no alternatives and MUST get things going NOW, consider a few security hacks to force imaging to work over anonymous access.  We don't recommend this because it allows generic access for creating files on your site servers.  That said, the steps outlined in HOWTO95016 work for Windows 7 and other site servers to enable anonymous access to perform image capture.  It is an unsupported solution! but has proven very useful in some circumstances while we push this issue through development.  Support can help you configure this work-around.  By saying it's unsupported, support recognizes that Development will not support this work-around.