Using Tivoli Software Package Blocks in BigFix Enterprise Server v8 – Part 2

Now that the Disconnected Command Line (DCLI) is in place, it is time to start defining the SPBs.

At a high level the steps are:

1. Create a site for Tivoli Software Packages and set the relevance
2. Use the Software Distribution Wizard to import the SPB
3. Modify the new task to use the correct syntax (wdinstsp)

I will not cover the creation of SPBs in this blog as if you are interested in using BF for SPBs you are probably already familiar with them.

Create Tivoli Software Packages Site

For this example, I found that it is best to create a specific site for the SPBs so that we can also set the subscriptions using relevance to check for the existence of the DCLI.

1. Navigate to the Systems Lifecycle domain
2. Navigate to All Systems Lifecycle > Sites
3. Right click in the List Panel and select “Create Custom Site…”
4. Set the name to “Tivoli Software Packages”. Press the OK button
5. Click on the “Computer Subscriptions” tab
6. Select the “Computers which match the condition below”
1. Set the property to “Relevance Expression”
2. Set the operator to “is true”
3. Press the “Edit Relevance…” button and enter the text exists file "C:\Program Files\Tivoli\disconn\w32-ix86\classes\swdis_env.bat". Press OK
7. Press the Create button and enter your password

Use the Software Distribution Wizard to import the SPB

For this example, I am using a simple software package that deploys the Orca.msi. This was created using the Software Package Editor with the MSI Wizard.

I have also been doing some work on using the Sha1.exe (http://support.bigfix.com/fixlet) and BfArchive.8.0.0.exe (http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=452) which will allow for the use of the sha1 keys.

Using the Wizard to create the task

1. Navigate to Systems Lifecycle > All Systems Lifecycle Wizards
2. Click on Windows Software Distribution Wizard
3. Replace the with Orca and press the Next button
4. Select the File option and browse to the SPB file. Press Next
5. Set the desired platforms. Press Next
6. Set the target relevance to us the Registry Key: "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Uninstall\{63A68338-16A3-4763-8478-A45F91A61E7A}". Press Next
7. Leave the command line alone for now as this will be modified later. Press Next
8. Review the summary and press Finish

Manually modify the task to use the wdinstsp command

1. Set the “Create in site” to “Tivoli Software Packages”
2. Click on the Actions tab
1. Replace the “wait __Download\orca.spb” with the following lines

appendfile call "c:\program files\tivoli\disconn\w32-ix86\classes\swdis_env.bat"

appendfile wdinstsp.exe -f __Download\orca.spb

copy __appendfile __Download\orca_install.bat

wait __Download\orca_install.bat

3. Click the Relevance tab and verify the value. For this example, the value was (name of it = "WinXP" OR (name of it = "Win2003" AND NOT x64 of it)) of operating system AND (not exists key "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall {63A68338-16A3-4763-8478-A45F91A61E7A}" of native registry)
4. Click on the Properties tab and set the source to “Software Distribution SPB”. This is done just to create a separate folder for viewing “By Source”
5. Press the OK button and enter the password

Now that the task has been created, it is just a matter of taking action and deploying like any other task.

This takes care of the setup for deploying software packages blocks using BigFix. There are a few other items that would need to be added this to make it really production ready, but I cannot give away everything ;)

If you have any questions/comments, feel free to comment on this blog or email me at martin dot carnegie at gulfsoft dot com.