Eye Heart Packaging

All help desk professionals know about using 10.5 disc to access the utilities on the disc. In 10.5 you could start from the disc by holding down "c" or "option". If you were already logged in to the OS you could put the disc in, and just open the OS X installer on the disc. This would then prompt you for an administrator password, and would then restart and boot from the disc. Once you were running off the disc you could click utilities at the top of the screen and have access to disk utility, password reset, etc.

From a 10.6 DVD I first noticed that when you run the disc in OS X it just begins the OS Installer. Instead you need to select "utilities" at the installer home on the bottom left hand side of your screen. Once you select that it will prompt for an administrator password. Once you enter the password you can then boot from the dvd and have access to your utilities you fondly remember from 10.5

Virus Scan Stream of Consciousness

Ticket 5547:

I believe we should give the green light to include VirusScan 8.6 w/

epo, eupdate, and filevault patches in all images. Additionally we

should push it out to all of our clients as soon as possible.

I have been running it on my machine for about a month without issue,

save the time it actually found a virus in a zip file I downloaded.

We need to put together a short installation procedure for the techs

which I can handle -- basically:

1. download virusscan 8.6 & the eupdate and filevault patches

2. mount all three images prior to doing anything else

3. install virusscan

4. install the filevault patch

5. install the eupdate patch

6. update virusscan

7. configure virusscan preferences:

a. enable onaccess scanner

b. schedule daily automatic update

3.13.09

First mounted all three, and then installed each. Followed instructions 1-7 (including a, and b).

It looks like in iceberg if you select files on the left, then click Archive > New Folder, label it whatever you need "usr" then you can add new "hidden" content as necessary.I will work on that monday.

3.17.09

Ok, it is a beautiful day outside and here I am frustrated with virus scan.

I spent a few hours today tweaking with iceberg and trying to get all the new files created with a virus scan installation (930). Upon further review, it is not a good idea to create those temporary files. They do not work I have found (I also checked with bill). But you live and fail.

I then decided to try packagemaker. There seems to be a lot more flexibility with package maker when drag and drop the files needed. However these files created a problem and caused the utility to freeze every time;

/Library/Mcafee

/Library/StartupItems/CMA

/Library/Local/vscanx

4/5 times I tried to add Mcafee the packagemaker utility would freeze, and I would have to force quit. When I was building the package, the "CMA" and "vscanx" folders would cause package maker to crash when it was compiling and trying to create the package.

It is also worthy to note that virusscan had 284 errors, and the cma package had 408.

I will try a snapshot to see what that yields tomorrow. I am hopeful that it can shed some more light on this problem, if not it looks like it might be back to the drawing board.

One possible scenario could be simply installing virus scan 861 and make a package. Then look into packaging the fv patch and the eupdate separately.

I met with Bill this morning about this. We have theorized that virus scan is running in the background and probably interfering with the packaging.

I am going to try to create a snapshot

3.30.09

Reimaged the mini and started packagemaker. I then follwed steps 1-7.

I am currently trying to build the package but the process is hanging with the following message "Checking for ZeroLink"

Off to the archives I go.

I am going to attempt using LANrev to make a package of Virus Scan.

I am going to try out first creating a package with options 2-5.

Not any easier. Package unsuccessful.

and boom goes the dynamite.

of the 3 i had the most success with Packagemaker - creating snapshots.

The built package would attempt to install saying some of the files on "/" could not be copied over, then the installer would quit

Adobe or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the CS

I have been working on successfully packaging Adobe CS3/CS4 for quite a time now. I was successful on my first or second attempt making a fully working installable package of Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Fist Pumps]. I tested the package on a local computer without any extra software, worked beautifully.

Then it came time to push out the package to a lab computer that had existing cs3 software. Once the package was pushed out for Photoshop it worked great also on the lab computer. However, all other cs3 apps were rendered useless. On launch every app asks for a serial number like it was the first time opened after installation. This is due to the flexnet publisher folder. It is located at /Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher. If you were to create a pkg that over writes that folder then your most recent install is the only Adobe Software that will work properly.

Second Trial:

After my first attempt I did some research and decided to try another method. This time I decided to use Iceberg, LogGen, and PkgGen together. First I would run an initial scan of log gen to find the initial system files. Once that was completed (~30min) I went ahead and inistalled all the necessary software for Photoshop CS4 (Bridge, Device Central etc). After that I went ahead and launched photoshop where I was asked to put in serial number. Entered serial number, and then proceeded to run updates on all the adobe apps. Once that was complete I ran log gen again to find all the changes to system files that had taken place. There were a total of over 20,000 file changes to the system. Once you cut out all the extra stuff that is shared files, resource forks, and other superfluous files I was left with the following:




With the expertise of another colleague I received the advice to seperate all the different apps into individual packages. The reason being that if something goes wrong it should be easier to troubleshoot the individual packages than it would if everything was packaged at once. The article referenced can be found here

Using pkgGen I was able to create faux folders from the txt output that created the apps. More details to follow...




All details are from ticket #5831

Microsoft Office 2008 Package Notes

The first successful package I was able to make was office 2008. I first tried using packagemaker, but that did not turn out well. Because office uses a lot of symbolic links, the package did not work properly.

Notes from William Strucke:
"created draft package -- i think I see where the problem is. when you run a snapshot package of the office install with package maker, it ignores the aliases in the office applications and creates empty folders instead.

e.g.:

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/Frameworks/MicrosoftOffice.framework

is an alias to

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/MicrosoftOffice.framework

but package maker creates an empty folder instead."

This is one of the very first problems we encountered with the shortcomings of Packagemaker. Because of this I then tried using Iceberg, another packaging solution from whitebox (http://s.sudre.free.fr/). With Iceberg I was able to create a successful package of Microsoft Office that in fact put the application in the right place.

ticket ref #4977