[Casper] Acrobat Pro

[Smith, William]

Adobe¹s applications have become more and more difficult to re-package.
Acrobat in particular has been a pain because of its self-healing mechanism.
³How do I disable Acrobat self-healing?² has probably been one of the more
discussed questions on this list and others. Standard users can¹t ³repair²
Acrobat and so they¹re presented with an authentication dialog that is
useless to them. Cancel it and Acrobat quits.

Also, Adobe changed its serialization methods between CS2 and CS3. It moved
from a flat file to a cache file. Anyone needing to install multiple
versions of an application or applications from different versions have to
essentially create a ³common files² package, which can be shared between CS1
and CS2 but not with CS3. That requires its own ³common files² package and
learning a new way to re-package.

Packaging all of this requires hours of installation and then time to take
apart and create individual packages. Sometimes this works fine but
sometimes things are broken, mostly Acrobat. It¹s voodoo to get it to work
properly. Then the troubleshooting has to begin. JAMF recognized the pain
Adobe¹s installers were causing and actually modified its own software to
help its customers make installation easier.

Even though Adobe hasn¹t provided Apple Installer packages it has been
providing scriptability with its own installers. This is what JAMF is using.
You can specify the serial number, disable updates, disable registration and
disable displaying the EULA by modifying just a few files. Learning how to
do this is, IMHO, preferable to the packaging problems we¹ve had in the
past.

Of course, the ideal solution is for Adobe to go with what is now standard
and just create Apple packages.

-- 

bill

William M. Smith, Technical Analyst
MCS IT
Merrill Communications, LLC
(651) 632-1492

On 12/8/08 12:47 PM, "Miles Leacy" <miles.leacy at themacadmin.com> wrote:

> Ok, I was under the impression that the reason /tmp couldn't be deployed to is
> because of the exclusion list in Composer.  Perhaps I was mistaken or there is
> a bug.
> 
> What I have done that works is to create a folder in /Library for such
> purposes.
> 
> I typically name it /Library/NameOfCompany and populate it with any files or
> folders that I need to use for deployment or management.
> 
> You should be able to deploy the installer to /Library/NameOfCompany/Adobe,
> and then call it with a script.  However, I believe someone on this thread
> mentioned that this particular update won't take the -silent switch.  Perhaps
> some UI scripting can get around this limitation?
> 
> My next question is why do you have to deploy this Installer from Adobe?  Why
> not take a Composer snapshot, run the update and package the changes
> (including undoing any Adobe "repairs" you don't like)?
> 
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Nichols, Jared <jared.nichols at ll.mit.edu>
> wrote:
>> My exclusion list is empty
>> 
>> On 12/8/08 12:50 , "Miles Leacy" <miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
>> <http://miles.leacy@themacadmin.com> > wrote:
>> 
>>> Did you remove /private/tmp from the exclusion list in Composer preferences
>>> *before* building your package?
>>> 
>>> 2008/12/8 Nichols, Jared <jared.nichols at ll.mit.edu
>>> <http://jared.nichols@ll.mit.edu> >
>>>> Is there a best-practice way to run these updates then?  I just tried
>>>> deploying to /tmp and I don't seem to see it anywhere in there.
>>>> 
>>>> Hrm.
>>>> 
>>>> On 12/8/08 12:28 , "Smith, William" <william.smith at merrillcorp.com
>>>> <http://william.smith@merrillcorp.com>
>>>> <http://william.smith@merrillcorp.com> > wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> The problem I've seen with Adobe's Acrobat 8.x updaters is that they are
>>>>> not scriptable like those for the other CS3 applications. Those .app
>>>>> updaters can be called with a ­silent switch but not Acrobat's. :-(
>>>>> 
>>>>> These Acrobat updaters also require that you select the Acrobat
>>>>> application to patch and also may ask you to "repair" the installation,
>>>>> which is Adobespeak for "let me put back my Safari and Office plugins and
>>>>> set myself to default again." These prompts must be manually dismissed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Also, JAMF may have a difficult time getting CS4 to work because the
>>>>> ­silent update for those suites wants to connect to the Internet to
>>>>> download updates as part of the install process. In our environment our
>>>>> Macs must authenticate to our proxy (no free love access) and that just
>>>>> hangs the install.

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