[wpkg-users] Other checks before installing

[Rainer Meier]

Hi,


On 23.09.2010 10:52, C. Johnson (IT Services) wrote:
> Is it possible to get wpkg to check for :
> 
> 1)      Free disk space
> 
> 2)      Enough PC memory to run the application
> 
> 3)      Correct operating system
> 
> …before installing an application.  We’ve successfully upgraded from Office 2003
> to office 2010 but have had a few PCs fall over when the C drive gets full. 

WPKG checks are there to check the installation status only. There are no types
of checks which are used to check whether the package should be installed or
not. WPKG simply tries to apply all packages which are applied by profile.

So if you have a group of machines which should get different software than
others (because they might be equipped with less memory or disk space) that
groups them into a separate group (aka profile). So it's recommended to create a
specific profile for these machines.

WPKG is not just a software deployment tool but rather a software
synchronization tool. So typically assigning a software package to a machine
which will then not apply it due to limitations is not within the scope.
Personally I even think it's a very bad idea to do so.

However some possibilities you still have. For example you might create a
package called "office" and then call a script within the install command. This
script can determine based on OS, memory or diskspace available whether to
install MS Office 2010, 2007 or 2003. Just make sure the checks allow any of
these office versions to be installed.
Well, I personally would recommend to create a profile for each group of these
machines and let WPKG make sure that exactly the right version of office is
applied to this machine.
If you do the decision on which Office version to install at installation time
this might have unpredictable side-effects. For example the user might fill up
the disk with some trash and even if the machine is supposed to be sufficiently
equipped the script will apply an old version of office since at the moment
there is not sufficient disk space. In such cases I would rather prefer that
WPKG applies Office 2010 as specified in the profile and then reports that its
installation failed.

There were some people asking to get system information within the logs (free
disk space, memory etc.). But I still think it's not the task of WPKG to collect
system information. There are a lot of tools existing which do this job
perfectly. Simply run a pre-run script (WPKG client supports executing such
pre-run scripts) which collects system information for you and stores it on a
server.

So in your case you should probably make sure that the machines still requiring
Office 2003 are getting their own profile in order to make sure WPKG verifies
that Office 2003 is installed properly.


br,
Rainer