SCCM deployment removed but application still getting deployed - sccm

An action was taken last month to delete deployments from an Application that was made available as required install earlier last month. There are no longer any deployments associated with the package but some users have reported that they just got the application installed on their computer from the same package.
Not sure why would that be as there are no associated deployments with the package anymore. The original application package was pushed out to user collection.
Any help identifying potential causes would be greatly appreciated.

You can try installing the Configuration Manager Support Center on a model device, then search the Content tab for the application.
If it does appear there, it might indicate a problem with policy update. Check the PolicyAgent.log and PolicyAgentProvider.log for possible errors.
It may also be because of dependency / supersedence, check the references tab in the application's Properties.
If it does not appear you can check the AppEnforce.log to verify that the application installation was performed by the SCCM Agent, and at what time.

Related

SSIS: Package password error when building

We have several hundred SSIS packages in a Visual Studio Integration Services project. When this was originally set up it was configured to encrypt sensitive data in the packages with the user key. This caused some issues for us when the project file was checked out and we had conflicts because, of course, our different developer user keys were different.
We just attempted to change to sensitive data with password. To do that we had to update the project property and then we had to do it for every package manually (I tried looping using dtutil.exe but for some reason it did not work). To build my project I had to open every single package, change the password, and then build the project. After a few hours of this and getting every package updated and saved I was able to build and deploy my packages.
After that I did a commit/push to source control (Azure Git) and when my co-worker did a pull and opened the project they are now unable to build with the same error. If he puts the password in and checks everything in and I pull it back down, I get the error again.
The package and project passwords match, I can build, but when it's pulled down we get the error.
The error is:
"Project consistency check failed. The following inconsistencies were detected:
[package Name] has a different password than the project"
I was able to get around this issue but I was not able to figure out exactly what is occurring. I basically changed my protection level to DontSaveSensitive and made sure all of my passwords and sensitive information were parameterized and passed in using SSIS environment variables.
So after making sure all sensitive data was not saved in the packages I changed the project protection level and the protection level of every package. I changed the packages using this code:
for %f IN (*.dtsx) DO dtutil.exe /file %f /encrypt file;%f;0 /quiet
This changed the setting for the packages but I still received the error when building. I had to open each package, change the protection level property to any other value then back to DontSaveSensitive and then build. Once I did that the items fell out of the error message. After doing that manually for 650+ packages I was able to build. The most important resolution was that once I did a push and my co-worker pulled the changes down, they did not have to edit each package. When I was using encrypt sensitive with password we could not stop it from requiring a change and build on every package.
This is still a bit of a mystery, why dtutil.exe would not just change them without needing to re-build is very frustrating. But this work around ultimately got us past the problem and parameterizing was probably the best practice anyway.
I just had the same issue, my problem was that I was missing to introduce the password in the properties of every package (not only in the project), after doing that I have been able to rebuild the project.

Sitecore Setup installation fails with error Failed to open XML file, system error:-2147024786

When running Sitecore Setup the following error pops up:
Failed to open XML file, system error:-2147024786
I've tried going through the eventviewer but to no avail.
Not unimportant is that I used the installer but forgot to change my rootdirectory. As a consequence I had to uninstall (using the same installer Sitecore).
Now however it "feels" as though there are some references or remnants left behind somewhere.
Who has a clue or can give me an idea of what is going on?
You are correct, this issue is because the previous Sitecore instance, with the same name, has not been removed completely. You will need to manually complete the following tasks to remove the remnants and be able to run the installer, it has worked for me in past;
Stop the App Pool for the uninstalled site in IIS
Stop the Web Application for the uninstalled site in IIS
Perform an iisreset in command line
Delete the App Pool and Web app in IIS
You should now be able to completely delete the folder containing the Website and Data folder completely
If you are still having trouble deleting it check the folder's Security Permissions, the Users and their Permissions and Read Only checkbox. Ensure you have control to delete
Delete the relating entry in the hosts file
If you also installed Databases access them via MSSQL Management Studio, take all relating databases Offline then delete them.
This will effectively remove all remanants of the previous site. If what ever reason the issue still persists, Sitecore's own Sitecore Instance Manager has a delete option which will completely uproot the site for you. Try installing with SIM then.

Notify developer that the file got overwritten

We are using Microsoft Team foundation server for version control where multiple developers are working on a branch and check in and check out the code.
How can a developer A be notified via email or SMS that his code got overwritten during the checkin by developer B.
Developer A needs to know this ASAP because the code changes of developer A will not work when its deployed into QA.
We are tring to save time in a fast paced development environment and trying to avoid code overwrite issues.
The easiest way to allow continuous parallel development and prevent a checkin from one person breaking the code of others, is to use a CI server. TFS supports this through Team Build.
Though it's preferred to run team build on a dedicated build server, it can be installed side-by-side on your main TFS server and it's possible to install the Controller component centrally and use your developer's workstations as agents.
There are two types of build triggers that can help you out here:
Continuous Integration - this triggers a build of all code directly after every checkin. It will tell you quickly that something did not compile. If you are doing unit tests it can even run these and tell you that a test is failing.
Gated - this will force a developer to shelve his code and will only check in the code when the build of the latest version plus the changes in the shelveset succeed. This may seem even better, as the code in source control will never be in a broken state, but in reality I prefer the ci trigger. The main reason for that us that Gated builds can't happen in parallel (due to their nature) and can actually delay the notification that the code is broken.
You can easily configure email alerts through webaccess on specific build outcomes. You can also configure alerts on source changes, but there is no option to only warn people who have edited these specific files before.
You can also run the Build Notification tool from the task tray to show a notification in Windows.
Though this will not tell the person whose code has just been overwritten that it's no longer working, it will tell the person I rewriting that code that he should pay more attention when checking in ;).
Of course you can configure a team alert that notifies everyone when the build breaks (as that's generally called), and there are funny ways to show the build status through small apps like "siren of shame", which provides a build monitor service that can be connected to a USB alarm-light that turns on and provides noise whenever someone does something stupid.
If you need to avoid this problem during check-in & merge, then I would recommend disabling multiple check-out. This allows file to only be checked out one-at-a-time and can prevent confusion on team projects.
If you need to do farther down the line, you can create TFS Alerts when any code is checked in and sent out to a distribution list, but it would not notify when specific contributions from a specific developer is altered - only a list of altered files during the check-in.

WinRT App's package family has more than one package installed.

When I go to debug our app I get the following error message
Microsoft Visual Studio
Unable to activate Windows Store app 'xxxx'. The activation request
failed with error 'This app's package family has more than one package
installed. This is not supported'. See help for advice on
troubleshooting the issue.
OK Help
When I dig out the event log I found this error.
The app xxx App's package family (xxxx) has more than one package installed. This is not supported, so the app was not activated for the Windows.Launch contract.
In order to find out what other packages are installed I run the following PS script:
Get-AppxPackage -all
Looking at the output from the previous script I only see the one package that is installed from the visual studio location. I uninstalled the app from the start menu and run the script again and there is nothing installed.
The app is signed so I can’t change the package family name.
I have followed the steps in https://stackoverflow.com/a/14340075/127067 and I still can’t run our app from VS or from the installed package.
How do I find the other errant package family name? Dig through the registry?
What are some steps I can follow in order to run the app again?
Hard to guess how you did that. Double-click the Package.appxmanifest file in your project. Select the Packing tab, you'll see the Package family name for your app. It is made up from the package name, a guid, and a hash of your publisher name. The guid is supposed to make it unique, make sure you didn't change it.
Installed Store apps are recorded in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository\Families registry key. Compare the entries with yours, a match will be a problem. Do try to get it uninstalled as normal before you start hacking the keys.
I also faced the same problem while I am developing a Windows App and trying to debug the same on my development machine.
So from the error message itself, it's clear that there is already an app installed on your app and installer cannot continue further because of that.
And above post, you get an idea what is happening inside our system and installer.
First time fixed the same problem with registry cleaning and clearing the registry entry for that particular app. You need to more mindful while doing the same.
But the second time, I face the problem again.
The actual question is why this is happening, at least on my machine.
When we try to create an app package (Project->Store->Create App Packages), we may change the package Version. This is the place where we are somehow creating that error.
Let's say I have already app installed on my machine from debugger with Version 1.0.0.1 and the second time we creating the app with version 1.0.0.2. Now, after creating an app we launch Windows App Certification Kit tool for verification of our app and it will fail (in my case). And if I want to debug the Windows app, it will show above error.
To solve this problem, what I did was, created the app package with the same version which is already installed on my machine and then tried to launch the debugger and that worked.
So this is my solution for this error. There may be some other way to solve this problem other than this and above mentioned solution.

Multiple Instances of ClickOnce app

Some background to my problem...
We are currently using ClickOnce to deploy part of our solution which was working a treat until we encountered a scenario where we are now required to have multiple instances of our application installed on the same PC. We are able to achieve this internally and have this working perfectly as we know what instances we have so our build process will update AssemblyName to include the instance name before publishing the installer, this means we are able to have multiple instances on our PCs internally (ie, test, live and demo etc).
Our external deployment process is slightly different, we take one of the ClickOnce installers created in our build (along with all our other components that make up our application) and as the ClickOnce installer is deployed on a server we update the app.config along with the manifest files and resign so they now have client specific details. If a client chooses to have multiple instances of our product installed the ClickOnce will now fail when a second instance is installed on a desktop PC as all instances share the same assemble name.
So finally to the question, does anyone know of a way to update the manifest etc after the clickonce package has been created to allow multiple instances to be installed? We could go down the route of building many clickOnce installers but I dont think this will really work for us, is there perhaps an alternative to ClickOnce which provides a similar upgrade experience for non-admin users?
Hopefully someone will be able to share their experiences and help me resolve this.
Thanks in advance
Doug
I don't know of another technology that allows such a simple auto update process. So sticking with ClickOnce... I think this link might be useful. It explains what you need to do to have the same app installed twice. Essentially changing the assembly name and product name should do it.
Hope that helps.
Greg

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