“Installation Failed. Contact your computer system administrator or Sophos Technical Support for further assistance.”
If you get this error while trying to (re)install Sophos Endpoint or even Sophos Home and in /var/log/install.log you see something like:
2017-10-17 10:47:56-06 hulk Sophos Bootstrap[5051]: [SMESophosBootstrapAppDelegate.m:1656] System verified 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEInstallController.m:237] Installing saas version 9.6.5 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEInstallController.m:857] Upgrading the "saas" product 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.prepare.stopProcesses" success: YES 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMERemoveFilesStrategy.m:110] Removing files belonging to components: [prepare] 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.prepare.removeComponents" success: YES 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.prepare.removeKeychains" success: YES 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEReceiptClient.m:199] Failed to launch receipt at /Library/Application Support/Sophos/saas/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/tools/InstallationDeployer. launch path not accessible 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEReceiptClient.m:56] Failed to launch receipt. 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEReceiptClient.m:199] Failed to launch receipt at /Library/Application Support/Sophos/saas/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/tools/InstallationDeployer. launch path not accessible 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEReceiptClient.m:73] Failed to launch receipt. 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEBuildInstallPlanStrategy.m:115] Failed to connect with receipt 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.buildPlan" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.cacheManifestComponents" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.remoteRemove" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.createUsersAndGroups" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.installComponents" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.processStart" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.localPayload.distributeNotifications" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEAggregateInstallStrategy.m:93] "installer.writeReceipt" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEInstallController.m:467] "installer" success: NO 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Bootstrap[5051]: [SMESophosBootstrapAppDelegate.m:1131] Received failure notification: (1) 2017-10-17 10:48:36-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEInstallController.m:347] Successfully sent the installer telemetry 2017-10-17 10:48:37-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SGCServerAuthenticator.m:159] Server connection successfully validated 2017-10-17 10:48:38-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SGCCDFSBroker.m:306] Feedback json file was successfully uploaded (status code: 201). 2017-10-17 10:48:38-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SMEInstallController.m:377] Failed to update saas to 9.6.5 2017-10-17 10:48:38-06 hulk Sophos Installer[5087]: [SophosDistantObject.m:219] An exception was encountered while messaging the server: SophosNilProxyException.
a passible cause is that the file "/Library/Application Support/Sophos/saas/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/tools/InstallationDeployer" permissions are incorrect and the file is not marked as executable as per the cause described on Sophos’ Community blog https://community.sophos.com/products/sophos-home/f/sophos-home-for-mac/89938/sophos-home-not-working-unable-to-uninstall—trapped-by-sophos-what-to-do/326016#326016 to fix the issue run the following commands from the command-line:
cd /Library/Application\ Support/Sophos/saas/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/tools/ sudo chmod a+x InstallationDeployer
then run the Sophos Antivirus installer again and the process should complete successfully.