Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

We have several instances where we need to perform detection for if a system is 32-bit or 64-bit and install the appropriate 32/64-bit product. We found a great way to use conditions within a job to determine the cpu architecture using a script task containing the following line and using the return code to specify what to do:

IF %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% == x86 exit 86

This works great because we can set conditional statements that sends the 32-bit quick delivery task if the return value from above is 86, and if it's 0 then it sends the 64-bit task.

However, we need to find a method to publish this job and included logic to the software portal. To my knowledge, the only way is to bundle this logic into a single batch file within a software package and publish the software resourse, or to publish a managed software delivery policy with similar logic. There are issues we found with both:

ISSUES
1. Batch file within Software Package: The return codes are not maintained from the individual executions within the batch file. Only the last one is returned which could appear to be successful when actually a previous return code failed. We really don't want to have to design ellaborate scripts to evaluate each return code etc...

2. Managed Software Delivery: This works fine for the user, but this adds them to the policy and we don't want to give users the ability to add their system to a policy that will constantly check their systems for this software. We want this to be a one time only install.

Is there a solution (for sequential software installations) that would allow us to push the "job" manually as users call in, and also allow the users to pull the same "job"?

Thank you for your assistance!

(Settings > All Settings > Agents/Plug-ins > Software > Software Management > Workspace Virtualization)

you can see that Symantec put both the 32 and 64 bit Software Releases into the policy and use the Applicability Checks in each Release to determine which gets installed.

32 bit Applicability Check: "32 bit platform" (AND NOT 64-bit Windows Installed)

64 bit Applicability Check: "64 Bit platform" (AND 64-bit Windows Installed)

That will work, however, the issue would be that if we publish this policy then the user's system will be added as a target when they install it from the portal. Therefore, there system will run this policy per the schedule there after. We'd like to make this a 1 time install that does not add another policy to their system as we'll have a lot of software portal installs. The policy targets will become a nightmare to manage after a while...

Any thoughts?

Thanks again...

I changed the schedule to 00:00 and the start date to a past date. Then I saw the following message when saving the policy:

"This policy's start time schedule has passed, therefore the policy will be enforced immediately after computers received their configuration update."

This may work.. I'll test and report back here.. Thanks

I don't need to set a past date, that ensures the policy runs as soon as applied and keeps the machine in compliance.

I see what you mean. However, the goal on our end is not to keep checking but to only run once. I don't want machines added to targets because if someone else has that machine we may not want that software on their machine. Is there any way to have it remove the computer from the target of the policy once it's successfully installed?

will still be on it.

Well, we reimage when we reassign computers. Trying to avoid having to have our techs look for policies to remove the systems from when they reimage.

when you reimage. Otherwise the inventory record will be all wrong until it does a full inventory, any Inventory based policies might run in unexpected ways.