Chicago Endpoint Management User Group

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  • 1.  SWV XPF layer installation basics in DS 7.1

    Posted Oct 14, 2011 06:51 PM

    We are using SMP 7.1 which includes deployement, inventory, asset, and service desk.

    Is there a manual on how to deploy Symantec Workspace Virtualization layers in XPF format from Altiris 7.1?   I looked at the SP2 release notes for DS 7.1 and they don't address this.  I'm getting ready to create my own software store and replicate using robocopy and do all my jobs with script tasks like I used to do with DS 6.9.  My boss wants me to utilize the package system with automatic replication but I don't see a way to put an xpf layer in a package and have it install.

    I managed to link two packages to my software as the inventory agent see's it. I have the original MSI files and and XPF layer that we want to deploy. But the package only has VSA as an option. So I attempted to put in the command line we used to use with DS6.9 to install the layer.

    svscmd i -p "mylayer.xpf"

    I assume that svscmd will be able to find this layer file without a full path as the package commands for other packages don't need it. However, this one just runs forever and never completes.

    Next, when it comes time to create a client job I had to deliver this package and then have a second task that actually activates the layer. I'd love to know if this sets it to "auto activate" as well since this is not an option in the console for an SVS layer task. None the less, I'm still stuck on getting the layer to the computer in the first place.

    Oh and I might as well mention how I dislike the package feature that copies the whole set of installation files down to a computer before beginning the installation. All of our intsallations ran the exe, msi, or xpf file directly off the server share. This copy everything first method doubles the installation time. I have no idea how I'm going to get Adobe master collection to install using this method as it's 12GB!! Likely I'll just go back to writing my own deployment solution with custom scripts



  • 2.  RE: SWV XPF layer installation basics in DS 7.1

    Posted Oct 26, 2011 03:27 PM

    We were having some trouble with our site servers which is perhaps why the above didn't work before. It turns out that we still had discovery turned on, on our 7.0 server which promptly hijacked our new 7.1 site servers.  After turning discovery off and reinstalling the 7.1 site servers to talk to the 7.1 SMP, we are up and running again.

    I've attached screenshots of a working package for an XPF layer file.  The new command also includes the parameters to activate and auto activate the newly imported layer.  This saves you from having to run an additional script job to accomplish this.  Using the built in "Software Virtualization Command" won't work because it doesn't have an "auto" command.

    svscmd i -p "EMS 6.XPF" "EMS 6" a auto

    The first "EMS 6.XPF" is the name of the xpf file to import.  Altiris takes care of the path to this file since it's in a package and takes it from

    The second "EMS 6" is the name ofthe layer