Troubleshooting

While not comprehensive, this page is a repository of common issues that you might run into while testing and deploying InstallApplications.

Nothing different happens when I boot my test systems!

Check the following, starting from the top and working down.

1. MDM - have you properly assigned the built package to be installed to the test system? The process to do this varies from MDM to MDM, contact your MDM vendor for help if needed. An easy way to check if the package is even being installed by your MDM is to look for the presence of the /Library/Application Support/installapplications folder, as well as /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.erikng.installapplications.plist.
2. Launch Daemon - check that your launch daemon plist syntax is right! A quick plutil -lint /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.erikng.installapplications.plist will tell you if the syntax is off and launchd is bailing on loading because of this. You should also check /Library/LaunchAgents/com.erikng.installapplications.plist if you have modified it in any way.
3. Connectivity - ensure that the location of bootstrap.json is reachable.
4. bootstrap.json syntax - IAs will bail out if your json syntax is bad. Check it with a linter such as https://jsonlint.com.
5. If you're running 10.14.0 through 10.14.3, be aware that there is a bug which may cause the MDM API to not trigger the InstallApplication/InstallEnterpriseApplication process, which would cause IAs to not install. This bug will be resolved in 10.14.4.

If the package is being installed, the LaunchDaemon and Agent are loading, and bootstrap.json is accessible, move on to troubleshooting the instructions you are giving to IAs.

My scripts aren't working / doing the right thing!

Make sure that you've properly defined root vs user script, as well as the proper stage (setupassistant vs userland) in your bootstrap.json file.

Curl crashes InstallApplications

If you absolutely must use curl in your scripts, please pass the -s flag to curl to prevent InstallApplications from crashing.

DEPNotify gets stuck

This is almost always something to do with the item and not IAs itself.

• Do you have a background script (e.g. caffeinate) running that you forgot to set the "donotwait" value in your bootstrap.json?
• Is your script waiting for some sort of terminal input?
• Check the logs at /var/log/installapplications.log. Have you spelled a path wrong in bootstrap.json, or have a bad hash value?

My question isn't answered here

Take a look at the logs, which are located at /var/log/installapplications.log. They're relatively verbose and should give you a pretty good idea of what is going wrong if the issue is with IAs itself. You can also ask in #installapplications on the MacAdmins slack, and the community may be able to give you some pointers.