[Casper] FYI: Adobe issue and workaround proceedure

[Ryan Harter]

Hey Guys-

I've been working to figure out an issue we've been having with Adobe  
Installers at image time for the past week or so.  Between our work  
and Sam's at Jamf support, I think we've figured out the cause.  I  
just thought I would share with you our symptoms and our workaround  
incase any of you have similar issues.

The Symptoms:

We have an old maintenance license for Adobe Creative Suite and  
therefore don't have the Master Collection, but instead we have DVDs  
for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. all as separate images.   
When we want to install these at image time, Casper Imaging copies all  
of the dmgs to the FirstRun folder and builds a FirstRun script that  
will install them.  The problem with this is that they actually copy  
the FirstRun script and resources to /private/tmp before putting them  
on Macintosh HD and our NetInstall image can't fit all of that in it's  
tmp directory.

The tmp directory would fill up, Casper Imaging would not error out,  
and we would get partial FirstRun scripts or wouldn't get one at all.

The Work Around:

What we ended up doing was making a policy with a custom trigger  
called "InstallAdobeApps."  This policy just installs the Adobe Apps  
like normal, but since we aren't in the NetInstall environment the / 
private/tmp directory has the entire local disk space to work with.  I  
wrote a script that we set to run at reboot when we image that just  
calls the custom trigger.

One thing that I wanted to add to this was the jamfHelper.app (this  
window that covers the login window and tells users that it is  
installing Adobe apps).  In order to add this functionality, I made a  
package that just contained the app (which can be found in the support  
directory inside the Casper Imaging.app package) which I had it  
install to /Library/Application Support/UWSP/.

Note: I initially tried to install this to /tmp, which is a silly idea  
since /tmp gets flushed at every boot and hence the file did not  
remain there.

The script then will check that the helper app exists, and if it does  
will fire it off before, and kill it after, the adobe installer policy  
is run.

The finished script looks like this:

> #!/bin/bash
>
> if [ -d '/Library/Application Support/UWSP/jamfHelper.app' ]; then
>     /usr/sbin/jamf launchJAMFHelper -path '/Library/Application  
> Support/UWSP/jamfHelper.app'
> fi
>
> /usr/sbin/jamf policy -trigger AdobeInstalls
>
> if [ -d '/Library/Application Support/UWSP/jamfHelper.app' ]; then
>     ## Unlock the login window
>     /usr/sbin/jamf killJAMFHelper
>
>     ## Remove jamfHelper
>     /bin/rm -rf '/Library/Application Support/UWSP/'
> fi
>
> exit 0

I just thought I would share this since it has many other  
applications, especially if you want to lock down the login window.

Ryan Harter
UW - Stevens Point
Workstation Developer
715.346.2716
Ryan.Harter at uwsp.edu

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