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Softgrid And The 8.3 Directory Name Requirement

Friday, 05 October 2007 by Michel Roth

One of the most important aspects in successfully sequencing an application in Softgrid is that you make sure that you sequence to a 8.3 formatted directory, preferably to Q:\. The latter part about sequencing to Q:\ usually is easier to explain than the 8.3 directory name requirement. It seems that I'm not the only one that has this problem. So thankfully, the Softgrid team has a blog entry up that explains why the 8.3 directory name requirement exists (actually it's not even an requirement just a really best practice). Definitely worth reading:

"Most, if not all, applications will generate a backwards compatible 8.3 directory name even when they install into a long folder name. If you do not even remember the days when we were limited by our directory and file names to an 8.3 convention please, do me a favor, and just skip ahead. You�re too young. Now an application such as Microsoft Office 2000 will install into a long folder of �Microsoft Office�. When it auto generates the 8.3 it would follow the algorithm of first 6 characters, a �~� and a number (1). So Office 2000 would be Micros~1.

Following proper sequencing practices you would revert the Sequencer back to its �clean state� at the end of every successful Sequence and start over fresh. If you were then to Sequence Office 2003, it would install to a long folder of �Microsoft Office�, again. And again, because the Sequencer is clean, it would auto create its 8.3 as Micros~1.

So if you stream these two packages to a single client, there is a short name collision. By specifying an 8.3 name, you avoid the auto generated short name and generate packages that won�t have the short name collision. "

Read the entire article here.