[wpkg-users] Fatal Error - Missing White-Space

[Rainer Meier]

Hi James,

beadlej wrote:
> I then type "wpkg.js /synchronize"
> 
> It then opens up a window that says, 
> 
> Error parsing xml 'Z:\packages.xml': Required white space was missing.
> File   Z:\packages.xml
> Line  56
> Linepos 36
> Filepos 2408
> srcText  <install cmd="%COMSPEC% /c mkdir "%AllUsersProfile%\Start
> Menu\Programs\CCleaner""></install>
> 
> NOTE: the srcText is different then the line in the packages.xml. That one
> is:
> 
> <install cmd='%COMSPEC% /c mkdir "%AllUsersProfile%\Start
> Menu\Programs\CCleaner"' />
> Note that the single quotations are replaces with double quotes and the end
> part of " />" is replaced with "></install>"  I don't know if that has
> anything to do with the error.

Looks like WPKG terminates with an unexpected exception while parsing the XML
file. Might be an internal error of the MSXML parser.



> After I press OK there are no more windows so I assume that it stops. 

Sounds logical because the error shown above comes from an exception which is
not catched, so wpkg.js terminates.


> A little background: I only have my computer in the hosts.xml and in the
> profiles.xml I only have ccleaner within my profile. In the packages.xml I
> only have the package for Ccleaner (which I copied and pasted from the wpkg
> website and updated it to the correct path and file name). I was trying to
> do more before, but then I realized that it wasn't working right, so I went
> back down to just installing one package. I did follow the walkthrough to
> install DIA and that worked just fine. I don't know what the problem is now.
> The only difference is that it's using %COMSPEC% to run some commands that
> DIA didn't do. 

Could you send me an extract of a minimal configuration where it happens (your
XML files)?
Probably you could try different encoding. The double-quotes within the
attribute value might be replaced by '"' encoding.



> Some other questions real quick. Do you have to define %software% in the
> "Variables, actions" tab in wpkginst.exe? If that is the case, what are all
> the variables that I need to define?

This is the recommended way be cause WPKG client will set these variables before
running wpkg.js which makes them globally available to all WPKG packages.
Alternatively you might define variables on host or profile level too.

Basically there is no obligation to set any variable and you might set any
variable you like to.
We usually recommend to use at least a %SOFTWARE% variable in order to prevent
requiring to hard-code the basic path to the installer files. This also allows
to use different %SOFTWARE% values on different sites where for example the host
name might be different. Thus allowing you to use the same packages on different
sites where one site might use
SOFTWARE=\\server\share\software
and on another site you use
SOFTWARE=\\software-server\share\software

While all the packages just use "%SOFTWARE%\my-software\silent-installer.exe".


> Also, considering that you can't silent
> install some software (Malwarebytes is one), how do you auto install it? I
> know that you have to login to use autoit and I saw a little on how to do
> that, but I was wondering if anyone else had a walkthrough on how to use
> autoit with wpkg.

I personally have some "aversions" to use AutoIt. Well, that might come from my
experience that click-recording style is not really stable - there are too many
things which can go wrong (buttons appearing at different location, different
button labels depending on language or other settings, additional windows
displayed depending on environment...)
So personally I was able to install every software either by figuring out some
silent switches or by extracting (some installers contain MSI files) or by doing
a reference installation and just creating a 7-zip self-extractor followed by
some regsvr32.exe and reg.exe command-lines to register components and set
registry settings.
However this sometimes requires some scripting skills. Have a look at the WPKG
web page which contains a lot of examples for many applications. Feel free to
add your own ones if you figured out how to silently install an application
which is not yet on the list.


> Thank you for helping me out with this one. I would love to be able to do
> what you all do with unattended, wpkg and autoit.

I hope this answer helps (at least partially). Somebody else might answer to the
AutoIt part...

br,
Rainer