system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType results in no output.

I manage a few OS X 10.8 systems and use a Dell K1000 appliance to manage them and install patches. The patch runs are "failing" on some of these systems because the new software (i.e. Safari) version is not detected, so the patch install runs (successfully), but then detects that the software still hasn't upgraded.

After some digging around, I've come to the conclusion that it's using system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType to determine what's installed and if the version is correct. And on the systems in question, this command returns nothing.

I assume there's a plist somewhere in /Library that somehow got blown away, so I would like to figure out how to repopulate it.

Interestingly, the K-1000 does list about 100 software packages on these systems, but not the nearly 250 that are on a clean Mac.