[dead2sin]

This is determined by which Build #s you put in the vanilla catalog. Just remove the one you do not want it to use.

Nate

[dead2sin]

The Firefox CCK applies to ALL OSes. Extensions are OS-agnostic. We use this method for our windows images as well.

Nate

[dead2sin]

Also worth noting, iLife 9.0.4 support will not install correctly on OS X Server when using the iLife09.catalog file. Mboylan confirmed this.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: mboylan[/u][p]Aha – ndpete mentioned not running it on the server version of OS X. That seemed to be the problem. I ported the InstaDMG folder over to a client mac and built the image there and sure enough, iLife Support was baked in. Glad that’s taken care of…[/p][/QUOTE]

This is why we cannot stress enough that you should not build images on the server OS. It does funky things.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: tristan_mason[/u][p][QUOTE][u]Quote by: bw38[/u][p]You don’t necessarily have to package FireFox unless you’re looking to customize it. The DMG that contains FireFox will be accepted by instadmg. It already knows what to do with it.[/p][/QUOTE]

Yeah. I was having a custom home page set but i’ll just do the standard instal I think in the interests of a clean image. I’m working my way through the other bits of the catalog now to make sure nothing else was doing the same thing further down the line. Tedious but a requirement. I’m kinda getting the hang of things now after a solid months trial and error and am actually getting close to a decent final product.

Tris[/p][/QUOTE]

Use the CCK to customize firefox.[url] http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/more-firefox-customization/%5B/url%5D

And then you don’t touch the .dmg from mozilla’s website, just use it as is.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: tristan_mason[/u][p]Thanks for that but i’m still unsure how, functionally you use multiple catalogs to produce a single DMG in the output folder? How in the terminal do I run 3 catalogs one after the other to produce a single DMG file?

Cheers

Tristan[/p][/QUOTE]

This covers how to do multiple catalog files: [url]http://osxdeployment.com/wiki/InstaUp2Date_Guide#Making_the_catalog_files[/url]

Specifically pay attention to this bit at the top of that catalog file:

[code]include-file: 10.6_vanilla.catalog
[/code]

And you can chain them together:

[code]include-file: common.catalog
[/code]

So you string them along as such. in BW’s example, Labsoftware would have include-file: CompanyBaseSoftware.catalog. CompanyBaseSoftware would contain include-file: Base_Settings. And so on until you get back to 10.6_vanilla.

Nate

[dead2sin]

For people it works for, they really need to post their catalog file. Brigandy, post your catalog file as well so we can see which order the updates are in. I *know* it can be done (I have an image that doesn’t require 9.0.4 upon first boot). It has to come down to the order in which things are installed.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: tristan_mason[/u][p]I’m thinking I should start a new thread… anyhow,

I’ve just made a pgk for CS5 with Composer and it’s diff file for CS5 and it has a bunch of support stuff in the Users/Admin and it does look like a lot of it is needed. Application Support stuff etc etc. I get the very strong feeling that if I was to delete it the suite would collapse. I do know that it works when I put it in the build train but I haven’t established if it is the package that is causing my lost folders in the user accounts. I should know by the days end however. It’s the old process of elimination trick today.

Cheers

Tristan[/p][/QUOTE]

Not the case. Anything in a user folder will NOT be make or break for the software itself. If it is in a user folder, it can go in the user template. Any files for Office 2011 settings can go in user template as well. Think about it this way, when you are logged in as a user other then admin, they have access to denied to all the admin files, so how could those be necessary for it to work? If they ARE necessary, the place they need to go is User Template, otherwise it simply won’t work for anyone other then the admin user.

Nate

[dead2sin]

InstaDMG does not support building Server images nor building the images themselves on Server OS. Try building a 10.5 image on a 10.5 Client machine and see what happens.

I believe he is referring to line 85 in the instadmg.bash file.

Hope that helps,

Nate

[dead2sin]

No. You must build 10.6 images on 10.6 machines (intel only). It is also not best practice to build images on Xserves, or anything else runnning OS X Server as it may lead to unforeseen weird issues.

Nate

[dead2sin]

As far as I know, the diff file generated packages *should* be clean, as they will only grab necessary files (which should leave out user specific files). I’ve honestly not used the diff packages because I always forget about them, but I’d imagine they are cleaner then anything I could come up with on my own (I find human error is the biggest problem with making images). If I could script everything to make perfect packages, I would

The biggest thing I would look for if you are going over all your packages is #1 /Users/user files and #2 system files that are just records of you authenticating, connecting to file servers, etc during the build process. I have those files show up in my builds all the time and I do my best to get rid of them. Many times they are outside of the main 5 folders and in places such at /etc/authorization and other places that are normally hidden to the end user. You must be careful though because many times apps will stash stuff in /usr/bin and other hidden folders, so be sure about whatever it is that you are deleting.

Worst case scenario, you delete too little and have to go back and remove a few more files from the packages. I’ve gotten a feel for which files are part of the major packages I have to custom roll (such as FCS3 and Avid) and over time you’ll get a feel for it as well. Make sure once you get it down you document it well…I’ve neglected to document how to package some stuff and when I went back to pack it, spent just as much time as I did the first time around. It sucked pretty bad.

Let me know how it goes for you all. FCS3 is big and has a lot of files, but I found it to be a lot less demanding then repacking CS4 (Not using the diffs…)

Nate

[dead2sin]

Making a package with files in /Users/ is sloppy unless they are in /Users/Shared. Adobe likes to put stuff in Shared, which is perfectly. Never ever leave files in a package that were placed in the local admin account of the machine you build the package on.

If software is registered via files placed in the account that was logged in at build time, generally speaking you can place just the registration files (determined by rigorous testing) into the User Template. This way, all users get the necessary registration files, but none of the other crap that might of gotten captured using Composer.

When building packages using Composer, the #1 priority is to make sure you have only the files you need. It is very easy to gather crap using a snapshot to build a package. I tend to go through several waves of tests to make sure I only have the files I need. If you get junk files in your Package, then building images using the modular style is no better then the Golden Master style of building images.

Sorry about the rant 😀 I spent several months learning how to build clean images with composer + instaDMG and while it was tedious when I was first getting my feet wet, it is now really easy for me to spot junk files that are not needed. It is really important to be careful about what you let on your images. Having stuff on there that shouldn’t be there can lead to some REALLY weird problems (I’ve had more then my fair share, it is not fun).

If I get some time, I can post a list of the major folders that are present in my FCS3 Package. Perhaps monday I can do so (if I can remember to…)

Nate

[dead2sin]

In the FCS3 Package, does it have a /Users folder? I delete all /Users folders from my composer packages except of a program puts stuff into /Users/Shared (that is ok). As far as the updates are concerned, that is rather interesting. Try to make sure FCS3 gets installed last and see if that changed anything.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: bw38[/u][p]I tried to create a package for BBEdit 9 licensed with the serial key. It seems to work fine using Composer if I stick with the one account I used to create the package. However I’ve noticed that if I tried to create a new account on the machine and try to open the program, the program will open but it will display the license prompt which is displaying the full license key in all its glory. How can I make it so that the program opens without any window prompts to enter the serial key under other newly created accounts?[/p][/QUOTE]

Find the license file it places in ~/Library/Preferences (Most likely) and place it in the default user template. Then all users will have the licensing.

Nate

[dead2sin]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: ndpete[/u][p]I’ve finally built a successful build. In which the update was applied as it was supposed to. I probably need to run another test or two but I think I know what was causing the issue. I try to build my images with my Xserve, with the internal raid It was my fastest solution. The build I just did that worked I ran from a Clean Macbook install with a firewire external for scratch. No cache and it took FOREVER but the build had the iLife Update applied. 🙁 Must be something with the xserve that instadmg didn’t like…or possible just 10.6.5 server that created the conflict..sigh 🙁 well looks like I’ll have to get used to 4 hour builds…. haha Thanks for the help…[/p][/QUOTE]

Yea, Karl has always said to build images on 10.6.5 Client OS. He can’t promise it will work perfectly on 10.6.5 Server.

Nate

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