Adobe Reader

[sketch]

Adobe Reader, bane of existence… how do people deal with it? What is the methodology, if any exists, for repackaging it for managed distribution?

[Rusty Myers]

sketch wrote:

Adobe Reader, bane of existence… how do people deal with it? What is the methodology, if any exists, for repackaging it for managed distribution?

Easy, just package the Adobe Reader 8 folder from the Application folder. I’m only worried about the intel versions. Can’t help if you have to do both PPC and intel versions.

[sketch]

So you don’t do the plugin?

[knowmad]

the plugin will ‘auto heal’ when next the program is run

[sketch]

knowmad wrote:

the plugin will ‘auto heal’ when next the program is run

But that would require the program to be run first. 😕

Not exactly “works right out of the box”

[Patrick Fergus]

CS3 is a beast to distribute and package. Acrobat is the most difficult, wrangling with the built-in self heal functionality. If you want the various plugin packages (browser plugin, Office PDF plugin, and PDF printer driver/PPD software), you have to build those into your installation package. You can either:

– Dig up the right files to appease the Acrobat suite. Compare the files on the hard drive before and after the first run–and collect what it dumps out on first run. Don’t forget to run both Acrobat Pro and Distiller if you’re packaging up the full Acrobat suite (not applicable in your situation, but good to note anyways).

or

– Edit the following files:

/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroENUDist80SelfHeal.xml
/Library/Applicaiton\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroENUPro80SelfHeal.xml

And set the following “install” keys to “NO” to disable certain items:

– Safari PDF Internet Plugin, the type is “PDFViewer”
– PDF Printer, the type is “AdobePDFPrinter”
– Office 2004 PDF Plugin, the type is “PDFMaker”

Beware of these files changing when Acrobat is updated–they have changed in the past. I’ve also never had a situation where the PDF Printer required admin rights to set itself up, assuming the PPD was available.

Also, it appears that the CS3 suite offers some sort of override for Acrobat Self Heal in this file:

/Library/Applicaiton\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat/SHExpectedMissingFileTypes.plist

but there isn’t any documentation.

I feel your pain, btw. I just had an CS3 Production Premium upgrade delayed for a few hours as a result of Acrobat.

– Patrick

[Rusty Myers]

sketch wrote:

So you don’t do the plugin?

I hate the plugins and don’t install them into the browsers. I find that users usually don’t even open up Adobe reader for the most part. It’s just there in case they need it.

[thegooch49]

Yeah, Acrobat Reader is a bit tough. I made a package installer with logGen and pkgGen. Unfortunately this is NOT at universal binary (thanks Adobe), which is one of the reasons I have a PPC and a seperate Intel image.

[vogtstev]

BTW – Wasn’t Acrobat 8 the first Adobe product to become Universal?

On a side note, I just tried made an image with this fix off Adobe Forums. It doesn’t seem like it should completely work, but many people claim it does. I’ll report back when I find out for sure.

Do this:

Go to
1) – Applications -> Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional -> Adobe Acrobat Professional ->
Contents -> MacOS in here you will find a file called AcroENUPro80SelfHeal.xml

2) Open this file with a text editor and do a search for “Utilities/” (without the ” ) you will
find 2 of them, press delete

old string looks like this = Contents/MacOS/SelfHealFiles/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities.localized/Adobe Updater5/Adobe Updater.app

new string will look like this after u delete the Utilities/ = Contents/MacOS/SelfHealFiles/Applications/Adobe Utilities.localized/Adobe Updater5/Adobe Updater.app

3) save the file

4) in the same folder you fill find a folder called SelfHealFiles

Go to.
5) SelfHealFiles -> Applications -> Utilities and make a copy of the Adobe Utilities folder
to ur Desktop.

6) move back to SelfHealFiles -> Applications and delete the Utilities Folder.

7) move the Adobe Utilities folder from your Desktop to the SelfHealFiles -> Applications.

before it looked like this = SelfHealFiles -> Applications -> Utilities -> Adobe Utilities

and now = SelfHealFiles -> Applications -> Adobe Utilities

Close all ur windows.

Go to:

9) Library -> Application Support -> Adobe -> Acrobat in here u will find a file called
AcroENUPro80SelfHeal.xml

10) Open this file with a text editor and do a search for “Utilities/” (without the ” ) u will
find 2 of them, press delete

11) save the file

DONE!!!!!

[vogtstev]

just tried it. seemed to work fine.

[fleecy]

I’m trying to get this procedure to work on Acrobat 9 / CS4, and I’m not having much success. Users are still prompted with an administrator name/password when launching Acrobat.

Is there something else we need to change on Acrobat 9?

[Rusty Myers]

@fleecy I’m taking another look at Reader 9 and I’m seeing the same thing.

I’m trying to package the things that Adobe Reader 9 installs in the home folders to see if that helps.

Did my first run with Composer and I am still getting the prompt for admin passwords at first start and Updates (though I turned them off in the other user.)

I am not getting requests to install the safari plug in. I am getting a prompt to update after trying to turn it off.

I want to get these worked out, but have to give up for the day. I will start again Monday to try to tackle this.

[Patrick Fergus]

This may help:

http://itmac.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/adobe-acrobat-admin-password-self-heal-problems/

I’d suggest poking at what exactly is being turned off and see if you’d like any of it or if any is needed for Acrobat to function correctly, but the answer is usually “no” to both. There’s also a mention of discussions on the MacEnterprise mailing list (I can’t find the thread or else I’d give a direct URL):

http://lists.psu.edu/archives/macenterprise.html

Dig around for these keys at the very least:

– Safari PDF Internet Plugin, the type was “PDFViewer”
– PDF Printer, the type was “AdobePDFPrinter”
– Office 2004 PDF Plugin, the type was “PDFMaker”

– Patrick

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