Merging CS3 and CS4 pcd.db files when upgrading to CS4 – necessary/possible?

[pepijn]

So I’m working on repackaging all the different CS4 Design, Web and Master Collection installs with Composer 7 to do a mass upgrade of all of my Mac users and to integrate into my build train. The stipulation is that existing CS3 users need to retain use of their current CS3 install while the transition to CS4 is made. I know from past experiences that the dreaded PCD licensing data that goes with their various products and suites tramples all over each other, requiring post-install manual updating of licenses — not at all the automated deployment I am looking for. Now I know that the pcd.db and cache.db are fairly basic sqlite3 DBs and since we use one single volume key the hacker in me wondered whether I could safely merge the old CS3-specific DB with the new CS4-specific one and end up with one pcd.db/cache.db file that would play nice with both. I have to read up on the cache.db file a bit more, it could very well be auto-generated from the main pcd.db file if it’s missing so it may just be the merging of two pcd.db files that I am looking at — if possible at all.

Granted, it may not even be necessary to worry about the PCD data and CS3 may just keep on trucking based on what it finds in the CS4 pcd.db file. I will have to do a trial install of one of my CS4 packages on top of a standard CS3 package and see what happens.

Short of this though, has anyone attempted something as described above or should I take the long way and install both CS3 and CS4 and then package up just CS4 using Composer 7’s preinstalled software method to be sure? Any opinions or experiences with the CS3 -> CS4 process would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Pepijn.

[Patrick Fergus]

I [i]think[/i] you could install CS3 and CS4 on the same machine with your volume keys (don’t forget to run Acrobat–sometimes it won’t license itself until it’s run) and then pull out the following files:

/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Adobe\ PCD/cache/cache.db
/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet\ Publisher/FLEXnet/adobe_00080000_tsf.data

These at the very least were sufficient for CS3–when we distribute CS3 updates there are a few users at my company who have single user licenses of random Adobe software and we have to back up and restore those two files to keep the licensing alive.

– Patrick

[pepijn]

I went with doing full installs of CS3 and CS4 on my build box and building a pkg with Composer 7. The standard template creates separate “All installed CS4 apps” and “Adobe PCD” packages. Neither seem to include the required FLEXnet files though, so I’ll add it manually and see what gives. Not looking forward to having to do complete installs of all CS3/CS4 Design/Web Standard/Premium apps plus any other standalone ones like After Effects… thanks Adobe, keep working on the deployment-friendly installers.

Pepijn.

[mattzago]

Adobe has a tool that actually works called the License Recovery Tool available at:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/licensing.html

If you look at the pertinent code in the python scripts that run for the tool to execute you learn that the two major things it does are:

1) Runs a compiled executable called “tsrecovery” that Adobe provides with flags depending on what the user wants. I’ve used:

tsrecovery -p 524288 –recover –yes

This will recover a license rather than delete it. There are other options if you want to backup the licensing files.

2) It copies a good known version of FNPLicensing into /Library/Application Support/FLEXnet Publisher/Service/11.5.0 (for CS4) and /Library/Application Support/FLEXnet Publisher/Service/11.03.005 (for CS3). It has copies of each file in folders labeled mac_install_lima and mac_install_lucknow (lima = 11.5.0 lucknow=11.03.005).

So one approach is to make a script that will execute tsrecovery with the desired options and then copy the FNPLicensingService executables. You could then invoke that script as part of your postflight for the installer, or whatever tickles your fancy.

MZ

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