The one with failing to update to HRP1

Another day, another case. This was some months ago. Windows 2008 with XenApp 5. The client was trying to deploy HRP1 onto the server but the installation was failing. With MSI logging in place it was discovered that the failing point/error was this one:

Error 1720. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A script required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Custom action SetHotFixName script error -2146827859, Microsoft VBScript runtime error: ActiveX component can't create object: 'Scripting.FileSystemObject' Line 7, Column 2

This was a long time ago so I don't recall all the steps I took to troubleshoot the issue, I only recall it took some time. Luckily, with some educated guesswork in place, I managed to get HRP 1 to install.

I blindly followed at that time all the steps described in this article, with no luck:
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX764017

Then for some reason I realized I'm in a 64bit environment so the location is wrong. Changed the location and ran regsvr32 c:\windows\syswow64\scrrun.dll

Now that worked fine :)

The one where everyone knows but us

I know...I know, this is not something new, it was blogged before many times by many others. It still makes a nice story.
Back at work, in our team (better said department than team), there are two VCP guys. There's me, the guru wanna-be and then there's my other colleague who has a bit more experience than I do; so for the purposes of this posting, let's call him guru. If any of the guys have a question they usually ask one of us before googling. So last week, as 'guru' was not at his desk I got asked by a fellow colleague: Why am I getting this message when trying to install vCenter 5?

The Fully Qualified Domain Name cannot be resolved. If you continue the installation, some features might not work correctly. For detailed requirements, see the vSphere Installation and Setup guide.

Don't know I said. Let's have a look. Computer properties: (domain name has been "masked")

 

So not part of a domain but there's DNS suffix. Well...when you click next, before the error comes on the scree there's a black command box popping. Worth a shot seeing what's doing. Ran Process Monitor and captured indeed CMD.EXE doing something:

 

 

It's doing a rDNS check on the server's IP. Can we check the results in a command prompt?

 

 

 

That doesn't look right. Who's architected this test environment and where's your DNS server young man?

 

Edited the zone (my colleague was running named on a linux distro as DNS)

 

Added an entry for our server - last entry visible.

 

Restarted whatever.

 

Went back to our soon to be vCenter server and checked:

 

 

rDNS works ok now.

Continued the installation...



 

....warning-free.

 

 

Apparently, everyone, guru included, knew about this 'requirement' besides me. (part of the reason also being the fact that I have a proper reverse lookup zone so never had this warning coming up).

 

 

Nevertheless, when in doubt, run Process Monitor :).