Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3 Release Notes

Article:DOC1356  |  Created: 2007-01-04  |  Updated: 2008-04-01  |  Article URL http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC1356
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Description



Question
What do I need to know about the 6.1 SP3 release of Altiris® Software Delivery Solution™ for Windows?

Answer

Altiris® Software Delivery Solution™ for Windows 6.1 SP3

Build 6.1.1058

Release Notes

This article lists the issues that are resolved in Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3 and describes how to obtain and install SP3. Links to the related Altiris Knowledgebase articles are provided where appropriate.

Introduction

Installation, Upgrade, and Uninstallation

What is New in this Release

Things to Know for 6.1 SP3

Fixes in this Release

Known Issues

Additional Documentation

Documentation History

Introduction

Software Delivery Solution is a system that provides secure, bandwidth-sensitive distribution of applications and updates throughout your organization. Software Delivery Solution supports LAN, WAN, and remote and mobile clients from a single infrastructure and offers advanced application management features, such as application self-healing, conflict analysis, and other ongoing software management capabilities. Software Delivery Solution lets you define software packages, distribute software packages, and run programs on computers with Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems and also on 64-bit computers.

To define and deploy software packages and run programs, Software Delivery Solution works in conjunction with Altiris® Notification Server™ software and the Altiris Agent.  You can schedule programs to run immediately or on a specified schedule. You can use the Altiris Console to define and deploy a package that consists of a collection of programs. Once a package has been defined, you can create a Software Delivery task to deploy the package and to run programs in that package. In a Software Delivery task, you can specify a schedule to run a program, the security context used when a program is running, and the collection of computers to which the Software Delivery task applies.

Installation, Upgrade, and Uninstallation

Prerequisites

On the Target Computer

  • Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista
  • Altiris Agent

        Note: To use Altiris Task Server and the Software Delivery Task Server Plug-in, the Client Task Agent is required

On the Notification Server

  • Notification Server 6.0 SP3 R4 or later
  • Altiris Task Management 6.0
  • Custom Console 6.5 and Custom Console Data 6.5

Where to Download

You can download released versions of Altiris products from http://www.altiris.com/Download.aspx.
You can download beta versions of Altiris products from http://beta.altiris.com.

Installation

Installation and licensing information is provided in the Readme – Quick Install .PDF file (included in the solution zip file downloaded from the Altiris Web site), in the Altiris Getting Started Guide, and in the Altiris Notification Server Help.

  1. Run the Altiris_SoftwareDelivery_6_1.exe file on the Notification Server.
    This also installs Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-In and the language pack for Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-in.

From the Altiris Console

  1. In the Altiris Console, click the Configuration tab.
  2. In the left pane, click Upgrade/Install Additional Solutions.
  3. On the Available Solutions tabview, click the Solutions button.
    Search for Altiris Software Delivery Solution for Windows solution and click the link.
    In the Suite Update dialog box, you can view the components that will be installed.
  4. Click Start.

Upgrade

  1. In the Altiris Console, click the Configuration tab.
  2. In the left pane, click Upgrade/Install Additional Solutions.
  3. Click the Currently Installed tab.

  4. Click the Update button for Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3.

Uninstallation

Software Delivery Solution

  1. In the Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs.
  2. Select the Altiris Software Delivery Solution entry in the list.
  3. Click Remove.

Caution: You also must uninstall Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-in as it has a dependency on Software Delivery Solution. The Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-in cannot be run without Software Delivery Solution.

Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-In

  1. In the Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs.
  2. Select the Altiris Software Delivery Task Server Plug-In entry in the list.
  3. Click Remove.

Language Pack for Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-In

  1. In the Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs.
  2. Select the Software Delivery Task Server Plug-In Language Pack entry in the list.
  3. Click Remove.

What is New in this Release?


The following features are new in this release.

  • Support for Windows Vista Operating System

In the 6.1 SP3 release, Software Delivery Solution supports the Windows Vista operating system. You can roll out a Software Delivery task from the Notification Server to install and run the Software Delivery Agent and Software Delivery Task Server Plug-in Agent on a computer with the Windows Vista operating system.

  • Support for 64-bit Computing

In the 6.1 SP3 release, Software Delivery Solution supports 64-bit computing. The Software Delivery Agent, Software Delivery Task Server Plug-in Agent, and the server side components of Software Delivery Solution all run on 64-bit systems with a 32-bit emulation layer. The 32-bit emulation layer enables 32-bit Windows applications to run seamlessly on a 64-bit Windows operating system.

To know about the other features in Software Delivery Solution, you can refer to the Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP2 release notes Knowledgebase article 25838.

Things to Know for 6.1 SP3

  1. The New Software Portal settings task requires that the Software Delivery Agent be available on target computers

In earlier Software Delivery Solution versions, the New Software Portal settings task first installed the Software Delivery Agent and then rolled out the task.

In the 6.1 SP3 release, the New Software Portal settings task does not install the Software Delivery Agent, but it requires that the Software Delivery Agent be available on the target computer. To make this easy, the Computers With Software Delivery Agent Installed collection is provided, which ensures that the New Software Portal settings task is installed only on target computers with the Software Delivery Agent. Therefore, while rolling out the New Software Portal settings task, we recommend keeping the default Computers With Software Delivery Agent Installed collection.

Note:

  • You can select a different collection but you have to ensure that the Software Delivery Agent is available on all the target computers of the selected collection.
  • The task fails on target computers where the Software Delivery Agent is not installed.
  1. When running a Software Delivery task with the System Account option requires not to select the Only when no user is logged on option

Consider the scenario below:

  • For a Software Delivery task, you have selected the System Account option in the Run with rights drop-down list.
  • You require user input while executing the Software Delivery task on target computers, so you select the User Input Required check box.

In the above scenario, ensure that you do not select the Only when no user is logged on option from the Program can run drop-down list, as selecting this option conflicts with the selection of the User Input Required check box.

  1. Deleting a program displays an error message if the program has an associated software delivery or software delivery task server plug-in task

On the Programs tabview of the Altiris Console, if you try to delete a program, which has an associated Software Delivery Task, the Unable to delete the program as it has software delivery tasks associated with it error message is displayed.

In both Software Delivery Solution and Software Delivery Solution for Task Server Plug-in, the same error message is displayed. So, you have to search the associated task for the program that you want to delete.

  1. In Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-in, the Post Program Run Actions are handled through the Task Server

In Software Delivery Solution Task Server Plug-in, the post program run actions, such as No action required, Restart computer, and Log off user, are handled by the Task Server. The After Running drop-down list on the Programs tabview of the Packages page lists all the post program run actions.

On the Task Server a Task Server Power Management task needs to be added to a job. The Task Server Power Management task takes care of post program run actions that are required to be carried out.

Fixes in this Release

Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3 resolves a number of issues to improve usability and reliability. Fixes included for:

Fixes
The Task Sync Agent increasing the network traffic to the Notification Server by sending extremely large amount of events.
The Software Delivery task running in a continuous loop after re-booting.
The delay between the user logged out and the package running after it.
In earlier versions, if a package that requires the user to be logged out was scheduled to start at a time when user logged in, the package was not immediately starting when the user logged out. There was a delay of an unknown length of time before the package runs. The delay is now set to 1 minute after the user logged out.
The Software Delivery tasks that were created before 1-Jan-2000 could not be changed or cloned. In the 6.1 SP3, the minimum date is set to 1-Jan-1900.
The error message that is displayed when an incorrect syntax is used while defining the valid Success and Failure codes.
The message is updated to make it user friendly. Following message is displayed on error:
The Software Package could not be saved.  There was a problem with the values provided for the <Success | Failure> codes.  Each number listed needs to be separated by a comma.  Ranges of values are also permitted.  For example: 0, 312, 400-500, 650.
When upgrading Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3, the last updated values on the Software Delivery Data Purging page are retained instead of resetting to default values.

Known Issues

The following are unresolved issues and workaround instructions for issues in this release:

 Known Issue  Article ID
The Software Portal functions incorrectly due to the unregistered MSCOMCTL.OCX file 26018
A duplicate copy of a software delivery package is created on the client computer 26021
Clicking a New Program tool opens a Software Delivery Program Page 26245 
The Deliver Software task fails the first time for packages that have the Package Servers option set to manual pre-staging 26244
Optimizing the Software Delivery and Task Sync Agent rollout collections 30524
Software Delivery Program assigned to Users/Programs runs automatically 33161
Script error message can appear on the Select a Package dialog 33218
Upgrading Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3 changes the Software Portal settings to default 33466
Software portal page does open in 64-bit Internet Explorer 34053

Additional Documentation

Altiris product documentation is available in Microsoft* HTML Help (.CHM) and Adobe* Acrobat (.PDF) formats. To view Altiris product documentation in .PDF format, use Adobe Acrobat Reader (available at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).

Documentation files are installed in the following directory on the Notification Server computer: C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Notification Server\NSCap\Help

To refer to the Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP2 release notes, see Altiris Knowledgebase article 25838.

The following documentation is provided with Software Delivery Solution 6.1 SP3:

SWDelivery61SP3.pdf
SWDelivery61SP3.chm

You can access documentation from the Altiris Console by clicking the following icons in the upper-right corner of the console:

 Access the contextual online help by clicking the online help icon.
  Access an index of all installed help by clicking the index icon.

Altiris Information Resources

Source What Information it Includes Where to Find it
Altiris Documentation Information about new features, update instructions, and known issues for each release. Includes Altiris formal documentation such as release notes, help, reference guides, best practice articles, and technical reference articles. http://www.altiris.com/support/documentation
Altiris Knowledgebase Comprehensive collection of articles, incidents, and issues for Altiris solutions. http://kb.altiris.com/
Altiris Juice:
an online magazine for Altiris users		 Best practices, tips and tricks, and articles for users of Altiris solutions. http://www.altiris.com/juice
Online Forums Forums for Altiris solutions and suites. http://forums.altiris.com/

Document History

 Date  Changes
2007/02/14 Beta Release
2007/04/05 Public Release

Legacy ID



31577


Article URL http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC1356


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