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Altiris Agent for Mac - Support for Mac OS X 10 Yosemite 

Nov 06, 2014 11:46 AM

This article is in regards to the SMP Agent for Mac 7.x and Mac OS X 10 (Yosemite). 

  

As of January 6, 2015, Symantec has released build 7.5 SP1 HF5 that contains full support for OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and Windows 8.1 Update 2. 

  

Prior to installing 7.5 SP1 HF5, the following applies:

Symantec will release an early support statement for running the agent on Yosemite on or about November 4th. A full support statement is tentatively scheduled for mid-December 2014. An officially supported release is expected in early 2015. 

The installation of the NS agent (versions up to and including 7.5.3193) fails when installing to a Mac with Yosemite installed. This is due to a change in how Apple handles application launch events. Apple removed the StartupItemContext file in Yosemite. Our agent-upgrade script (and software from other vendors, apparantly) relied on that file. 

To enable installation of the agent, the following workaround may be applied to the Mac. It involves copying a StartupItemContext from a Mac running an earlier version of Mac OS X or creating the StartupItemContext file from scratch. 

The complete path to the file is: /usr/libexec/StartupItemContext

The contents of the file (with mac line endings) is: 

*************************************
#!/bin/sh 

unset LAUNCHD_SOCKET
exec launchctl bsexec / "$@"

*************************************

After copying or creating this file, permissions must be changed by running: chmod 755 StartupItemContext

At that point, the agent should install normally. 

Note that the workaround is for the agent installation only and official support will not be provided until it is included in an official release. There is no guarantee that other processes and solutions will function fully and correctly. 

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Migration User
Mar 18, 2015 05:22 PM

Hi, 

The file doesn't have an extension. 

Migration User
Mar 18, 2015 02:21 PM

Spritchet,

No extension is necessary, but the proper permissions need to be set on the file.  You could run a script on the machine to do the work for you.  Something like this should work.

#!/bin/bash
##############
# Altiris 10.10 Installation Fix
# Check for the existence of the StartupItemContext file in /usr/libexec/ #
# If the file doesn't exist create it with the necessary contents and set the proper file permissions #
# to resolve Apple OS X 10.10 Altiris installation script failure. #
#####
LOGFILE="/var/log/altiris.log"
/bin/echo "Starting job `date`" >> "$LOGFILE"
FILE="/usr/libexec/StartupItemContext"
DIR="/usr/libexec"
if [ ! -f $FILE ]; then
/bin/echo "$FILE file doesn't exist" >> $LOGFILE
####
/bin/echo '#!/bin/sh
unset LAUNCHD_SOCKET
exec launchctl bsexec / "$@"' > /usr/libexec/StartupItemContext
#####
# Change to /usr/libexec/ Directory
cd /usr/libexec/
# Set Permissions on the StartupItemContext file
chmod 755 StartupItemContext
else
/bin/echo “The $FILE file exists” >> $LOGFILE
fi
exit 0 ## Success
exit 1 ## Failure

 

 

spritchet
Mar 18, 2015 01:29 PM

Guys,

This may sound odd, but what type of file or extension should the StartupItemContext file have?  One of our Mac people thought it should be a script file with and extension of .scpt

 

Thanks

Migration User
Nov 18, 2014 10:41 PM

Hi Guys,

I've sorted out the install feature, however I've noted that on restart the Agent stops running and gets "service not running"

I have to run
sudo /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/bin/aex-configure -configure

Which occasionally gets the service back up and running. I'm wondering if this is being seen elsewhere and if there is an option (other than to run the above command on startup of the machine) to fix this issue??

Thanks.

Migration User
Nov 11, 2014 12:11 AM

Thanks Doug!

Here is the early support statement: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7791

Powershell_Guru
Nov 06, 2014 01:45 PM

Hey Doug,

 

Thank you for the article.  I had a user upgrade to Yosemite prior to my updating his 7.1 agent to 7.5 and I was able to create that file and install without issue.

 

Great job,

 

Paul

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