Unix agent install: Failed to find the target installation root dir

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

The installation of the Altiris Agent for Unix, Linux and Mac fails with the following error:

Failed to find the Altiris Agent installation root dir
Failed to find the target installation root dir

There may or may not be another error regarding the agent being already installed.

Cause

Undetermined. It may be related to a previous installation in another directory.

Resolution

In this situation, on a Solaris 10 client computer, we used a browser to connect to the NS7 server's NSCAP directory and downloaded each component of the agent installation individually. The agent directory is nscap\bin\UNIX\Agent\Solaris\x86. We downloaded all eight files.

We then proceeded with the following steps:

chmod 755 agent-upgrade
chmod 755 rollout*
agent-upgrade -reinstall -dir=/opt/altiris/notification/nsagent

At this point, the previous installation was removed and the new installation proceeded, as expected. However, since an NS server name was not specified, the configuration did not complete and the altiris process was not started. It may be possible to run the agent-upgrade with an NS server name, e.g.: 

      agent-upgrade myns7servername  -reinstall  -dir=/opt/altiris/notification/nsagent

We then ran "/opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/bin/aex-configure -iconfigure", specified the NS7 server name at the first prompt, accepted the default values for the remaining prompt.

The altiris process started and the client computer was able to communicate properly with the NS7 server.

Applies To
Altiris Agent for Unix, Linux and Mac 7.x.