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Lagamorph

Task Sequence hangs on Package Install

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Hi all, me once again!

 

I'm currently experiencing issues with a package installation. On my Virtual Machine builds I've noticed that it hangs sometimes, but the majority of the time it installs fine and the task sequence completes normally. However I've used the same task sequence on 9 Physical machines yesterday and every single one of them has hung at the same stage, installing the same package. Fortunately it's one of the very final steps in the task sequence, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it's failing.

For reference the build is coming from a Standalone ISO and is an offline build, so there's no dependency on network connections.

 

The application in question is Splunk Universal Forwarder, I'm installing the MSI as a package using a .cmd script, which contains the following,

@echo off
 
Echo Installing Splunk Universal Forwarder
 
msiexec /i "splunkforwarder-6.3.0-aa7d4b1ccb80-x64-release.msi" /l*v "C:\Windows\LOGS\Splunk.log" AGREETOLICENSE=Yes INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\Splunk Universal Forwarder" DEPLOYMENT_SERVER="<myserver>.<mydomain>:<myport>" WINEVENTLOG_APP_ENABLE=1 WINEVENTLOG_SEC_ENABLE=1 WINEVENTLOG_SYS_ENABLE=1 WINEVENTLOG_FWD_ENABLE=1 WINEVENTLOG_SET_ENABLE=1 LAUNCHSPLUNK=0 SERVICESTARTTYPE=auto /qn
(I've changed the Deployment server details just to keep things generic)
The log file never gets created, so it seems that the installation is never actually starting. The LOGS folder is there, as other packages put logs there fine when they install, but no log for this one. If I press F8 and open task manager at the stage of the task sequence where it's hung then I don't see any msiexec processes running.
Strangely though, when I've deployed the package using the same script to an already built machine, so install it via Software Center, then it installs fine, I only seem to have issues when deploying the package as part of a deployment task sequence.
I've restarted one of the hung machines in order to get the smsts.log file, though there are multiple ones, in the Windows\CCM\Logs\SMSTSLog folder and more in the _SMSTaskSequence\Logs folder. I've checked the SMSTS.log and the ones with the date/time in the filename from both locations and in the C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\SMStslog\smsts.log file I just found multiple entries for
Waiting for job status notification
Right up until the point where I forced a reboot, where I then get a bunch of
Failed to create instance if Software Execution Request Managerr. 0x80070005
Though I assume this part is down to the forced/unexpected reboot of the machine during the task sequence.
I've attached the relevant part of the log in a file to this post.
Can anyone see why this might be failing and just endlessly hanging on the waiting for job status notification stage? There is a Reboot computer part of the task sequence directly before this package installation so there should be nothing else outstanding that was waiting on a reboot.
For reference, I'm running SCCM 2012 SP2 (Non-R2)

Splunk.log

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Check this

I've had a read through that but I'm not sure it's quite the same issue I'm having.

That article references deploying a captured image, which this isn't. The task sequence is deploying an OS from a .wim file pulled directly from an Installation ISO (Though it has had windows updates included via SCCM) and the Package I'm installing isn't the first one, it's the very last one after multiple other packages have installed successfully.

The package has been hanging for longer than 12 hours as well, it begun hanging at around 5:40pm yesterday evening and was still waiting at 8:30am this morning.

 

I'll give the recommended fix a try though, and put the powershell script in just before the Package that's hanging. Given how long the standalone builds take it'll probably be tomorrow before I can report back any success.

 

 

I did try running the powershell command from F8 on one of the hung machines. Running just the Get-WMIObject did show some entries, then I ran the delete command, after that running just the Get-WMI-Object returns nothing, though the task sequence is still hung. It's possible though that the command has to be run before the package attempts to start.

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It's because the task sequence is essentially a "unified" sequence for different environments, so different applications (or versions of applications) will be installed as part of the deployment depending on which variables are selected using the UDI wizard at the start of the task sequence. As I said the install.wim has been updated with Windows Updates using the built-in SCCM tools, so it's not quite a 'from scratch' deployment.

 

I did experiment with using a Captured image initially, but no matter what I did the Task sequence would always immediately exit after reaching the SCCM client installation, and would never actually move on to the Application installation point. The quickest way around this was to just forego the whole Build & Capture process and do a complete deployment.

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Sadly adding this script didn't make any difference. The deployment still hangs when I attempt to deploy that package. As before it doesn't appear to ever start installing, just hangs endlessly with "Waiting for Job Notification"

 

I'm hoping to get the SCCM environment upgraded to R2 soon, so I'll do that and rebuild the Standalone ISO and try again. Hopefully this is just an SCCM bug that's fixed somewhere after SP2, it doesn't strike me as being the package itself since it never even starts to run the installer and it's not doing anything special, just using msiexec.

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Your call, but captured image deployment is definitely the only sensible way. Everybody has some "base", so whatever applications you consider as base, can already be included in captured image (being it Office, various runtimes etc)

As can be any required tweaks to ie default profile

 

For TS there is no difference if it applies install.wim or mycapturedbootdrive.wim

 

As you your problem, stick Pause step just before offending application:

Run Command Line with this command:
cmd /c start "cmd" /wait cmd

and at that point run the command by hand (just to see that it works at all)

 

Only way to test really

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