SCCM has built in reports that a Project Manager that I am working with is requesting that shows if a certain program has installed successfully or not. He mentioned that even if the report shows that the program installed successfully, it has been his experience with SCCM that many times this is not true and now he is requesting a custom made report that will actually check to see if the program is really installed or not. I just wanted to ask why would SCCM report the program installed successfully, if in fact it did not? This program was deployed using the old SMS Installer by the way and there are no MIF files used. Also, would it behoove me to use MIF files? I have never used a MIF file before and I have heard that they are not necessary in SCCM like they were in SMS. Does SCCM just report success or failure depending on what gets logged into the Execmgr.log file? I have also heard that I can somehow return an exit code to SCCM in a script or something, but I am unclear how I can go about doing this. Anyway, if someone can help me gain some more insight and clarification, that would be great.
Thanks everyone.
Best Answer
SCCM is only as smart as the return code of the installer. Most installers are pretty dumb, one way or another. I've had plenty of installers that will exit with return code 0 (success) no matter what happened during the install. I've even seen installers that present an error message but don't return any code.
I can nearly guarantee you this has been your project manager's experience as well. It's been a frustration of mine in the past, that you can't define success for an installation, it's only the return code.