Keeping the Lines of Communication Open Between Notification Server and SVS

We asked troubleshooter Brent Bishop to share a swig of wisdom related to Notification Server and SVS working as a team. He shares a few ways to sidestep problems you may run into if Notification Server fails to recognize SVS or execute its commands.

The Issue

Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) advertisements which run the autogenerated programs inside of Notification Server (NS) SVS packages (there are 15 programs autogenerated at this time when the *.vsa file is selected in the Package Manager window or the Virtual Software Wizard) fail to run and give an error message of "SVSCMD.exe is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." or they simply seem to fail to perform their function.

The Details

This may occur on all or only some NS clients running SVS. It generally will not occur shortly after the SVS agent is installed as the path statement should still be in order. But other installs or user changes may change the path name and cause issues.

The Cause and Resolution

The NS SVS advertisements depend on the SVSCMD.exe file being in the path. When SVS is installed to a client machine the install program adds the install location to the system path command. But this only happens at install.

It is also possible -- but not too likely -- for the path environment variable to get too long. On most current OSs (Win XP and above) the path can have 8192 bytes which is fairly long. The most likely causes of problems are other install programs or user changes which alter the path environment variable value so that SVSCMD.exe is not in the path. These changes will cause the NS SVS program command lines to fail.

A Few Fixes

1. Reset the path statement. You can either type this string at the command prompt or include it in a batch file:
   

   set path=%path%;C:\Program Files\Altiris\Software Virtualization Agent\
    
   

   Note: Quotes are not needed for this command even though there are spaces in the path string.

2. Include the SVSCmd.exe in the package where the command lines run from. If it runs from a remote location (mapped drive as SMS or NS may do) this may be an issue. If you see problems, move the file to a local drive.