Re-packaging Adobe CS4 Design Premium with logGen, pkgGen, and Iceberg

[pteeter]

I see a couple of threads about re-packaging Adobe CS4, so I’ll try not to duplicate previously offered information.

A few people from the MacEnterprise list asked me how I accomplished re-packaging CS4, this forum seemed like as good a place as any to post what I’ve done.

By no means should anything I say be accepted as gospel truth. The Creative Suites are such beasts to re-package, you may find a better method and I’d be happy to hear about it. Feel free to offer suggestions.

Here’s what I did…

1. took a before system snapshot with logGen
2. installed the Design Premium version of CS4 from DVD media on a freshly imaged 10.5.6 machine, I omitted a few things I knew my organization didn’t need – Version Cue & Acrobat.com specifically
3. did NOT apply any Adobe updates
4. run logGen and create a post install diff file
5. manually parse the diff file and separate it into the following app/support file specific package content lists:
[code]
Adobe AIR with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Acrobat 9 CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Bridge CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Device Central CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Extension Manager CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fireworks CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Flash CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fonts with CS4-diff.txt ***
Adobe Illustrator CS4-diff.txt
Adobe InDesign CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Encoder CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Player with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Photoshop CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Shared Files CS4-diff.txt ***
[/code]
6. run pkgGen against each of these diff files, creating unique ‘pkg-root’ folders for each diff file
7. with Iceberg, create unique pkg installers for each of the above 15 diff/pkg-root folders

For the majority of these diff files, the only file called out is the application bundle. Some might consider this to be excessive, I just find that this level of modularity makes troubleshooting that much easier.

The ‘Adobe Fonts with CS4-diff.txt’ file calls out only OpenType fonts added to /Library/Fonts/. The ‘Adobe Shared Files CS4-diff.txt’ file covers a variety of locations – /Applications/Utilities, /Library/Application Support, everything else that installs under /Library. I’m going to upload the diff files to the ‘My Downloads’ section. Please feel free to view them, critique them, offer suggestions about the contents, etc.

I’ve been building an experimental InstaDMG image with 10.5.6 and all of these CS4 PKG installers for about 6 weeks now. The InstaDMG process works fine, the image deploys fine (we use Deploy Studio), the machine boots without issue, and each component of CS4 Design Premium functions perfectly.

I’ve re-packaged a first set of updates to CS4 as well. It requires a super fun preflight script to delete tons of files. I’ll try to post an update for that shortly.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to your feedback.

[Stephen Buckley]

Just out of interest why didn’t you use LanRev Install Ease, I created my CS3 packages using loggen/pkggen/Iceberg and I’ll attest it works pretty well.

However now that Install Ease is free (as in beer), I have swiched my snapshot package making to use it, and have just finished packaging up my CS4 deployment using InstallEase and Iceberg. The whole experience was a good deal faster and more pleasant than I remember the CS3 one being.

Maybe I am missing something, but I don’t really understand why anyone would still be using loggen/pkggen any more save for the desire to only build packages using open source tools, which I suppose is fair enough.

FWIW I went ahead and upgraded my CS4 suite to the current latest release using the adobe updater prior to taking my second snapshot and it appear to work fine.

Haven’t yet rolled it into an instaDMG build (that will be later this evening), but its worked well when deployed via ARD.

Glad it worked out for you anyhows.

[pteeter]

I’m a unix/cli guy.

loggen and pkggen just feel better to me.

I admit the gui tools work – Composer, InstallEase, etc.

It’s just comfort that’s all.

[typofonic]

Hi pteeter

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: pteeter[/u][p]
4. run logGen and create a post install diff file
5. manually parse the diff file and separate it into the following app/support file specific package content lists:
[code]
Adobe AIR with CS4-diff.txt
etc…
[/code]
6. run pkgGen against each of these diff files, creating unique ‘pkg-root’ folders for each diff file

For the majority of these diff files, the only file called out is the application bundle. Some might consider this to be excessive, I just find that this level of modularity makes troubleshooting that much easier.

The ‘Adobe Fonts with CS4-diff.txt’ file calls out only OpenType fonts added to /Library/Fonts/. The ‘Adobe Shared Files CS4-diff.txt’ file covers a variety of locations – /Applications/Utilities, /Library/Application Support, everything else that installs under /Library. I’m going to upload the diff files to the ‘My Downloads’ section. Please feel free to view them, critique them, offer suggestions about the contents, etc.
I’ve re-packaged a first set of updates to CS4 as well. It requires a super fun preflight script to delete tons of files. I’ll try to post an update for that shortly.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to your feedback.
[/p][/QUOTE]

Hi,

I was wondering if you could explain the steps 4-6 more thoroughly? I don’t get it 🙂

I like the modular way you package it. Also I’m looking very much forward to hear more about your super fun preflight scripts

/ Anders

[Geno]

I am well behind both of you guys. I really don’t care what method I use, I just can’t get a working package for CS4. Right now I am just trying Photoshop, and can’t get a working pkg.

I have tried both of your methods. With the loggen route I got licensing errors I could not recover from. Tried again, and got the same problems. Today I tried the lanrev method, and it encounters errors when I tried to install the straight .pkg, and also when I used the iceberg route. I did not do any updates just used the lanrev snapshot method.

Any replies, private messages, or e-mails would be greatly appreciated.

sincerely,
adobe cs confused ;

[walt]

I used the LanRev application to make a CS4 package and it worked well. When snapshotting there are a number of things that could potentially cause your snapshot to be inaccurate or be problematic when installing etc. What I did was install CS4 on a clean install of Leopard (10.5.7 not that it matters) and took a snapshot with LanRev. I then took the Iceberg package and removed some things that weren’t needed, such as the files it installed into my local User’s directory. I did keep what it installed into /Users/Shared. As long as you are only installing CS4 and not doing anything else your snapshot shouldn’t need any modification when you bring it into Iceberg besided what it installs into your User’s folder(s) besides ‘Shared’.

I started the snapshot as soon as I hit ‘Install’. Before you start the Installation and the Snapshot you should have input the serial number so you shouldn’t encounter any licensing issues, if you are are you sure you are not having a licensing problem even when you are not installing CS4 from your custom.pkg? Once you open the Iceberg project hit Command-B and build it and it should be fine.

[pteeter]

I think posting my diff files will help A LOT.

Look in the My Downloads section of AFP548.com for the latest/newest addition.

Pull the zip archive down and find these files:
[quote]
Adobe AIR with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Acrobat 9 CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Bridge CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Device Central CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Extension Manager CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fireworks CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Flash CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fonts with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Illustrator CS4-diff.txt
Adobe InDesign CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Encoder CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Player with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Photoshop CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Shared Files CS4-diff.txt
CS4-update1-diff.txt
CS4-update1-preflight.sh
[/quote]

This will help clarify steps 4-5 I think.

Step 6 works kind of like this.

sudo pkgGen /path/to/diff/file/diff.txt /path/to/created/pkg/root/pkg-root

pkgGen will parse the contents of the diff.txt file and copy the heirarchy of necessary files, preserving ownership/permissions/etc, into the specified pkg-root folder.

Make sense?

The postflight script and diff file for the 1st CS4 update is also included. I’m pretty sure more CS4 updates have come out since I re-packaged that group of updates. I’m without a development environment at the moment so can’t really investigate updating the CS4 Updater package.

I hope this is helpful. Please reply with more questions if you have them.

[Geno]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: pteeter[/u][p]I think posting my diff files will help A LOT.

Until I can get the files posted on AFP548.com, try this:

[url]http://paulteeter.net/pjt/CS4-files.zip[/url]

Login is afp548, password is afp548.

Pull the zip archive down and find these files:
[quote]
Adobe AIR with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Acrobat 9 CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Bridge CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Device Central CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Extension Manager CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fireworks CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Flash CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Fonts with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Illustrator CS4-diff.txt
Adobe InDesign CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Encoder CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Media Player with CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Photoshop CS4-diff.txt
Adobe Shared Files CS4-diff.txt
CS4-update1-diff.txt
CS4-update1-preflight.sh
[/quote]

This will help clarify steps 4-5 I think.

Step 6 works kind of like this.

sudo pkgGen /path/to/diff/file/diff.txt /path/to/created/pkg/root/pkg-root

pkgGen will parse the contents of the diff.txt file and copy the heirarchy of necessary files, preserving ownership/permissions/etc, into the specified pkg-root folder.

Make sense?

The postflight script and diff file for the 1st CS4 update is also included. I’m pretty sure more CS4 updates have come out since I re-packaged that group of updates. I’m without a development environment at the moment so can’t really investigate updating the CS4 Updater package.

I hope this helpful. Please reply with more questions if you have them.

[/p][/QUOTE]

pteeter, thanks so much for your continued help, I really appreciate it. I will try this in a few, hopefully get different results.

[pteeter]

Please now download files from the My Downloads section of AFP548.com.

The same diff files and scripts are now available here.

Thanks.

[typofonic]

Hi pteeter,

I’m wondering if you have files for the newest CS4 updates as well?

[shownde]

The real question is, why do we put up with major software developers putting us through the agony of their BS custom installers. It would be one thing if they actually made our lives easier, or if there wasn’t a standard installer package format with lots of free tools and no licensing costs to use. It’s another entirely when they just make unnecessary work for us. Adobe (and Mathworks, and a few others) should build .pkg installers, especially if they are building a .msi for Windows.

Grumble grumble grumble.

[Chris George]

I’ve just been repackaging the whole enchilada using Composer 7.

What I do is:
[list]
[*]use the Deployment Toolkit to create the custom silent installer that is pre-serialized and has auto-updates and registration turned off
[*]use that silent installer
[*]apply all updates
[*]launch Acrobat and Distiller, and modify the required files to kill self-healing
[*]copy the required Acrobat/Distiller preferences (and com.adobe.registration.118 to the User Template (non_localized) folder
[*]add in a postflight script that [list]
[*]creates the required symlinks to the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles and /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles/Recommended inside the /Library/ColorSync directory
[*]copies the preferences FROM the user template folder to all already pre-existing home directories
[*]sets Acrobat as the default PDF for all users[/list]
[*]complete the package.

So far, so good. 🙂

[sketch]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: Geno[/u][p]I am well behind both of you guys. I really don’t care what method I use, I just can’t get a working package for CS4. Right now I am just trying Photoshop, and can’t get a working pkg.

I have tried both of your methods. With the loggen route I got licensing errors I could not recover from. Tried again, and got the same problems. Today I tried the lanrev method, and it encounters errors when I tried to install the straight .pkg, and also when I used the iceberg route. I did not do any updates just used the lanrev snapshot method.

Any replies, private messages, or e-mails would be greatly appreciated.

sincerely,
adobe cs confused ;[/p][/QUOTE]

When you push your created package out to a test system is there already an Adobe product installed?

[chops]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: shownde[/u][p]The real question is, why do we put up with major software developers putting us through the agony of their BS custom installers. It would be one thing if they actually made our lives easier, or if there wasn’t a standard installer package format with lots of free tools and no licensing costs to use. It’s another entirely when they just make unnecessary work for us. Adobe (and Mathworks, and a few others) should build .pkg installers, especially if they are building a .msi for Windows.

Grumble grumble grumble.[/p][/QUOTE]

I with you on that, shownde. Problem is my boss and users have neither clue how hard this is nor do they care. THAT is why we have to put up with Adobe’s foolish installers from hell. I have spent waaaay too much time on this!

I have tried several snapshot and packaging methods and still get licensing issues in the lab (non-admin) user accounts. Acrobat Pro and Distiller have given me the most troubles, and I can solve them but at a high price in time:
1. log into the lab user account
2. launch Acrobat Pro (succeeds)
3. launch Distiller (fails with the “licensing is no longer working” alert and takes Acrobat Pro down with it)
4. Apply AdobeLicenseFix.pkg using ARD.
5. Launch Acrobat Pro again and supply the requested admin user ID and PW

After this CS4 seems to work fine in the lab user account. But this is a BIG DEAL when I have to deploy to 200 Macs by myself. My solution includes the usual tweaks: the SelfHeal fixes; the Application.xml fix; futzing with permissions, etc. I’ve even tried watching file system activity with Sonar to get ideas. Zilch results.

So today I thought I’d give the Adobe Deployment Toolkit another try. Now that it is finished building I remember why I shied away from it before: It doesn’t create a package. I can only run the installer from the client, which has to install off the server where the resources live. This means a whole lot of hits on the server while the whole gang tries to install from it at once. I guess Adobe assumes we’re just installing to a couple of computers so bandwidth is no problem. WRONG! I make my base image with InstaDMG, but for everything else use Deploy Studio because it gives be multicast style speed with a train of packages.

So here’s what I’m going to try next: Package up the Adobe installer set, complete with uber installer etc, and create a package that dumps it on the client Mac then runs the uber installer on the second boot (first boot is already taken with other config stuff). It means a package about twice the size of those I’ve been creating with snapshots and Iceberg, but it _is_ playing by Adobe’s own rules. I’ll post my notes on the process back here.

Thanks for reading my rant, wish me luck, and stay tuned…

Patrick Mullen

[chops]

This is a follow-up post to report the results of more experimentation.

First I tried it Adobe’s way, but as described a few posts back: Package up the uber installer and the repository directories and dump them to the client, then run them after the Mac boots. It didn’t work for me. I had exactly the same broken licensing as before, but worse because I would have had to run all the updates as well, plus the package weighed in at 5.5GB vs 3.8GB for my DIY package. Fuhgetit!

My last attempt used logGen and PkgGen to do what I had done before with Composer. No change. Licensing is always broken. What I did discover, however, is that it is important NOT to run Acrobat Pro or Distiller first. Running Photoshop first cut the number of steps down. I still have to touch every dang Mac to finish the config process, but it doesn’t take 10 minutes per Mac any more. FWIW, here is the sequence:

1. Deploy as normal
2. Log into the lab user account
3. Launch Photoshop (or any CS4 app, but NOT Acrobat Pro or Distiller). Result: “Licensing for this product has stopped working.”
4. Install AdobeLicenseFix.pkg via ARD (this pkg came from Adobe)

And that’s it. Everything works now.

Note to Adobe: We shouldn’t have to deal with this! 👿

[Author]

Posts