Issue with deploying Dropbox PKG installer to macOS devicesSolved

Which architecture are your devices – Intel or Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.)?

Oh, I have a mix of both. Are there separate PKG files for both these architectures? Should I upload both and install the correct one based on which type it is, manually?

Maybe there are separate installers for both architectures- I am not quite sure about it though.

There is only a single installer for both the architectures as Dropbox uses a Universal Binary installer. A Universal Binary consists of “slices” which correspond to the code for the two architectures. The operating system will detect the correct system architecture and execute the correct slice. Hence, the PKG should be doing the trick for you, I wonder what may be going wrong.

Hello @carter , Hexnode UEM supports uploading PKG or MPKG or DMG file formats for Enterprise apps. However, for Dropbox, as it utilizes Universal Binary installer, a better method would be to create a DMG file for uploading to the Hexnode Repository. DMG file is best suited for simple applications and general user distribution and is the most common app distribution method for macOS.

The PKG installer can be converted to a DMG file using the inbuilt Terminal and Disk Utility in macOS. Open the Terminal in a MacBook and use the pkgutil command to expand the PKG installer into the comprising files (or “slices”). Use the following syntax for the command:

Where path/to/your/file.pkg is the path to your pkg installer and /path/to/output/directory is your destination path to store the expanded files.

For example, the command could be:

where the pkg file is in the downloads and the destination folder is the desktop

Your destination path will have several application files and other compressed archives. Open the Disk Utility app in the same MacBook and click on File from the top menu. Select New Image and further select Image from Folder and select the application files from the destination path where the expanded PKG files are located. The new image will be created in the destination folder you set.

Upload the DMG file to the Hexnode app repository by navigating to the Apps tab, clicking on the Local Apps section, +Add Apps > Enterprise App and choosing the platform as macOS. Configure the app name as Dropbox for future identification.

You can then try deploying Dropbox to your target Mac devices.

Regards,
Elle Reed,
Hexnode UEM

No wonder the PKG installer was failing for you, @carter . Have you tried uploading Dropbox to Hexnode now?

Yes I did, and now it works perfectly well! Thank you, @elle_reed , and @ryanmoore for solving this for me.

I was under the notion that the two different Apple architectures worked very differently. It’s not more work anymore!