How to (App-V): Check if Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) is working

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:52:33 +0200

How to (App-V): Check if Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) is working

A very common issue is that Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) does not work or does not seem to work. One of the first questions then should be if the component's package really has been loaded into the primary packlage or if DSC already fails on that first step.

Basically, there is an quite simple test that should be perfomed on a Test Client (well, you alway try new things on a Test Client, don't you?):

Check the App-V Client management Console if component packages are loaded

Open the Client Management Console, expand the "Applications" node. First you should make sure, that no App-V application is running: Check in the "Package Status" column that all packages are "idle".

Then, start the Target or Primary application that should load some components.

Check the Client-MMC again: Besides the Target Application's Package, also the status for the dependend packages should be "In use". If that is the case, DSC itself is working. If not, well there is an issue...

Geek Test

In some situations you may not be able to make sure that all App-V applications are propperly closed to perform the above test. Imagine you are on a production Terminal Server with some users logged on. In that case, it might happen that the Component Package almost always is "In use" because it might have been triggered by another DCS application or it also may run stand alone.

In that scenario, you have to find some other way for trouble shooting. Generally I would recommend to open an application inside the Virtual Environment that is capable of browsing the file system (or also the registry). With that application (say, its a CMD), try to browse to the Primary Directory on the Q: drive (that's the famous 8.3 directory) . If you can access the Component's Primary Directroy on the Q: drive, DSC does work. If you can't, well - something went wrong.

Get access to the virtual environment:

So, how to start a "file system browsing" application inside the Target Application's virtual environment?. It is easy if that target application already has a "File Open" or "Save" dialog. Then you are done with this step. If not, you have to load a "troubleshooting application".

As usual, there are different ways to accomplish that:

App-V trainings and some Sequencing guides teach you how to use "Pre Launch Scripts" to run executables from an App-V Environment
You may use SoftBar or ACDC to launch any application from a VE
You may use the /EXE parameter of SFTLIST (type SFTLIST /? on the command prompt to see more options)

Determine the Component's Primary Directory

And, exactly what is the name of the Primary Directory that should be tested? This info can be grabbed from the Target Application's OSD file. It should contain one or more CODEBASE HREF lines that include a MANDTORY tag. These are the line where Dynamic Suiting is defined. For each of this lines, look for "osguard.cp". The portion before that tells you the Primary Directory. And then use your Troubleshooting Application and try to access it.

Common Causes

So, what to do if DSC does not work, i.e. the Component's VEs are not loaded? Common issues are:

MANDATORY set to FALSE (and, depneding on the deployment method, the Package is not streamed)
User does not have access rights to the component package
there is an issue streaming the component package

And if DSC does work as described here but the apps are not working? Then you might need to take some advanced troubleshooting steps like using ProcMon...

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