I'm Rob Marshall, a consultant who specialises in the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager product. I like to share, i do so by blogging and helping out when I can in the MS SMS newsgroups and participating in the ConfigMgr MVP program.
I was awarded and joined the program in 2009. It'd be an understatement to say it has to be one of the best experiences an IT engineer can have, if they really enjoy specialising in a product.
My biggest weapon for troubleshooting is, my formidable knowledge, no, only joking, you, the community. I find if I cannot answer a question, then I can usually find the answer from using Bing\Google, pouring over the documentation, and if that doesn't work, tinkering in mine or someone elses virtual lab.
The blogs pretty much about ConfigMgr, but it is also a platform for me to express my random urges to display something I've stumbled across, and that I imagine would entertain you or what not as equally as it did me.
Task Sequences are one of the many powerful features that drive ConfigMgr usage, giving you the ability to deploy either operating systems or complex (logic based and error sensitive\insensitive) application installations. Recently I came across a problem which stopped us using the Run Command Line Task Sequence step in a new task sequence. We wanted to use the Run Command Line step since it allows you to tell ConfigMgr to manage custom success codes that are produced by the package being referenced. However some of the packages specified in the defined Run Command Line steps are not showing up as Task Sequence References.
Recently I came across a problem which stopped us using the Run Command Line Task Sequence step in a new task sequence. We wanted to use the Run Command Line step since it allows you to tell ConfigMgr to manage custom success codes that are produced by the package being referenced. However some of the packages specified in the defined Run Command Line steps are not showing up as Task Sequence References.
Look Ma, No Package ID reference! It’s very easy to reproduce this based on the following conditions · You have upgraded your SMS2003 Site server to any edition of ConfigMgr · You are selecting a package that was created in SMS2003 in a Task Sequence Run Command Line step
It’s very easy to reproduce this based on the following conditions
· You have upgraded your SMS2003 Site server to any edition of ConfigMgr
· You are selecting a package that was created in SMS2003 in a Task Sequence Run Command Line step
The problem took a little while to work out but once a pattern was discovered, we were able to reproduce it in a fresh lab build and take the results to CSS for further assistance. CSS was quickly able to identify that it is indeed a problem and that a hotfix is going to be released soon. No ETA on the hotfix, but once it is released I’ll update this blog on how to get it.
If you are encountering this problem some simple options available to you are:
· Recreate the package on the ConfigMgr site· Revert to using the Install Software step instead of the Run Command Line step, although for some this may not be an option due to the requirement to handle a custom success code
o If you requite handling of a custom success code then wrap the execution up in a script that identifies the specific custom success codes and if they are produced then change the error code to 0 so that ConfigMgr handles the installation as a success
· Raise a CSS ticket