With ConfigMgr 2012 there are 2 packages used to install the ConfigMgr client. The first package which is called the Configuration Manager Client Package can be found under the Packages node of the Software Library and is used during OSD in the Setup Windows And ConfigMgr step to install the ConfigMgr client. The other package, which is hidden is called Configuration Manager Client Upgrade Package and this package is used when the Client Upgrade feature of ConfigMgr 2012 is enabled. The fact that this package exist can only be determined by looking at the Content Status under Distribution Status in the Monitoring pane for example.
The Client Upgrade functionality provided in ConfigMgr 2012 can be used to upgrade existing ConfigMgr clients already assigned to your Site to a new version. The functionality is not suitable if you have many clients, because it’s an on/off option without any further control in terms of scheduling or collection scoping.
If for some kind of reason the Configuration Manager Client Upgrade Package gets deleted, you cannot recreate it by creating a new one from a package definition file, like you could do with the Configuration Manager Client Package.
Normally when the Configuration Manager Client Upgrade package is deleted, this should be detected and should be regenerated automatically, but if it doesn’t you can create a empty file with the name client.acu and place that file in the inboxes\hman.box folder at the top-level site (either your CAS or PSS). After that check your hman.log to check whether the Client Upgrade package gets updated.
Excellent post! Thanks. I’ve had an empty entry in Content Library Explorer for a while but haven’t been able to get it to redeploy. Using the instructions above, I at least got it to say ‘Invalid’ next to the entry. Still won’t redistribute, but it’s progress. Appreciate it.
What a fiasco! Your post saved me. Thank you so much. I was hesitant since my client and client upgrade packages looked ok but they still would not update to my new site server. Added the client.acu file as suggested and voila! everything is working!!!
Thanks again.
This worked for me too! I’m so glad I stumbled upon this!
This fix worked for me as well, but only after I modified the source directory for the package. Just dropping the file in ..\inboxes\hman.box initiated an attempt, but SCCM saw no change in the content so did not process everything. I went into [ConfigMan Install Directory]\ClientUpgrade, and renamed the ccmsetup.exe file to ccmsetup.exe.old. I then dropped the client.acu file in the ..\inboxes\hman.box directory, this time SCCM picked up the changed file and distributed it. Of course, once distributed, you then need to go back and change the name back to ccmsetup.exe and drop the client.acu file in hman.box again to redistribute the file with the correct name:) Thanks a lot for the post, this one had me stumped for a while.
Matt, this method worked great for me. Thank you.
Instead of renaming any files in the client or upgrade client directories, drop a text file called redist.txt into the folder. You can just add some random text to it any time you need to redistribute (I just add the current date and who redistributed to the text file). You can then use the client.acu file to trigger the update.
Note, there are now 4 client and client upgrade folders in the SCCM install directory … I target all of them.