.APP Installations

.app is the standard identifier for an executable OS X bundle and has been since OS X's birth. I suggest you go back and read Composer's documentation as it absolutely supports it.

Administrator's guide

Start on page 166 for Composer.

@jpilege You may need to do a snapshot style capture from Composer before and after installing the apps.
If it is purely move .app file from downloads to Applications folder that is very simple, if it's configurations as well you'll be needing to go through the snapshot afterwards and delete all non-relevant files.
Depending on if any relevant files are written within the user's home directory you may need to create the finished package as a .dmg so you are able to FEU/FUT.

Let's take a step back before resorting to before/after snapshots to deploy an entire application/preferences. Sure it works but that's not really best practice.

What installation media are you getting from the vendors? Are you getting a pkg from the vendors at all? If you are then drag the pkg into Casper Admin. Those should hopefully work as is and install the applications, if they don't come back and let us know and maybe someone has dealt with those two specific applications and can provide some more guidance. If they provide DMGs which are just drag and drop installers of the .apps into the Application folder then you can use the pkgbuild command in OS X 10.7+ to create a pkg installer.

For example,

sudo pkgbuild --install-location /Applications --component /path/to/app/for/MyGreatApp.app ./path/to/save/package/packagename.pkg

As an example for Firefox:

sudo pkgbuild --install-location /Applications --component /Applications/Firefox.app ./Desktop/Firefox_v300.pkg

For more options, in Terminal type: man pkgbuild

In terms of preferences, you may need to look at where those are stored on the particular computer when something is changed. One simple way to do it.
Install the application on a test computer. Do not open application yet.
Run Composer and do a before snapshot.
Open application and look at the preferences you want to change. Close the application.
Go back to Compoer and do the after snapshot.
Look at the files that were modified and open them up and look at what format they are in? If they are in plist you can hopefully then take away the specific preferences you need and make them into config profiles so that you do not have to resort to using FEU/FUT. Keep in mind some applications may set a lot of preferences on initial run, many which you will not need nor care about.
I believe you can upload a plist directly into the JSS (Computers -> Configuration Profile -> New -> Custom or use a tool like MCXtoProfile https://github.com/timsutton/mcxToProfile to convert plist into config profiles)

Good luck!

It the app is a simple drop straight into the Applications folder type app just drag if from Applications and drop it onto the left hand panel of Composer and it will create a deployment containing just the app. Just make sure to check the permissions afterwards in Composer as the app will use whatever account was used to drag and drop it into Applications in the first place.

Sophos converted their installer to a .app recently. Check the contents of your .app and look for a component that installs your software.

For example, Sophos Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/tools/InstallationDeployer.

You should be able to cache your .app down to the machines and then apply a script to run the install.

@jarednichols I understand that Compose supports .apps. I'm currently using that product to create the .dmgs and .pkgs then testing them before deploying.

I left this next paragraph out of my original post and apologize for the confusion. This info may help a little more with the issue that I'm encountering.

The issue is after creating the .dmg with Composer and deploy the software to different computers. The software may install correctly on one profile, but when going to a different profile the program states that it's either broken or corrupted or there isn't sufficient permissions to use the software. Screen shot of one message is attached. This is what I get on my machine

I download the software from LogMeIn.com. I get Cisco Jabber from my phone administrator and when he downloads the software from the site (site it unknown to me at this time) it's already a .app. So far we haven't been able to find a .dmg or .pkg from these vendors. (My phone admin is looking to see if they have a .dmg or .pkg option for Jabber.) I love having .pkgs as they hop into Crash Admin and deploy with no issues.

@bpavlov Thanks for the information. I'll give this a shot and see what happens. I'm still new with Terminal and OSX.

Thanks for everyone's post and advice!

@jpilege did you check the permissions on the application(s) before you created the .dmg with Composer? It sounds like the permissions may not be set appropriately to allow other users to access the program. Can you tell us what the permissions are on the apps you are capturing with Composer?

Not sure if this has been suggested or already tried, so apologies.
I usually use disk utility with the "make image from folder" to a compressed .dmg. which I upload to munki with no deployment or users issues .If munki can install it Casper should be able to

LS

@jpilege It sounds like a permissions issue for sure. If you're new to OS X then getting right into Terminal is a great way to start!

Go into Terminal and type the following:
ls -la /path/to/application

Where /path/to/application would be the Application.app you are looking to deploy. What does it say? You should see permissions and ownership.

To change permissions you can use the commands
chmod: to change permissions
chown: to change ownership

To learn more about those commands type out "man chmod" and "man chown" in the command line.

As an example would be:
chmod -R 755 /Applications/Firefox.app
where -R signifies recursively (hit all subfolders/files) and give it 755 (rwxr-xr-x)

chown -R root:wheel /Applications/Firefox.app
where -R signifies recursively (hit all subfolders/files) and assign it to user root and the group wheel

By fixing the permissions, you'd be able to use the commands I gave you earlier and it would now deploy with the proper permissions.

As for the phone administrator, I would just make sure that if he's using Safari that he check the Trash for the original file download. Safari will take downloaded zip files and unzip the contents into the Downloads folder while deleting the original downloaded zip file.

By all means feel free to follow the other people's advice with Composer if in a bind, but I figured I'd share this to get you started into some of the wonderful things you can do in Terminal with the command line.

Thanks for the replies!

I went back to Composer to check the permissions on the app. I had to re-add the DMG and convert it back to the source to look at the permissions. It looks like the Owner was set to my account with no access to the Group or Everyone. I changed these to the Owner being root and added the R and X to the Group admin and Everyone, then recreated the DMG.

In case this doesn't work I'm creating a new DMG from a new snapshot to test the permissions and deployment again.

For the experience and fun I decided to try each option. I'm still working on the Terminal steps to change the permissions. It looks like the changes were made to the root and administrator. I'm waiting for my colleague to get back from lunch to see if the app on his profile is fixed. His profile didn't pop up on the list in Terminal.

I'll let everyone know my results and outcome as soon as I get something back.

FYI, I keep that type of app as owner=root group=wheel. It could just as easily be owner=admin group=wheel. Now, that's for .app files. If you're capturing user library or preference files using Composer and intending to distribute them using the FET or FUT function then the individual file preferences will be replaced with the proper user credentials on the unit in which it's being installed.

Also, Composer snapshots are great, but you have to know what you're doing! I mean, really, really.

@mm2270 @bpavlov Thanks for your guys replies. Both seemed to work on test machines.

I ran the command line with no issues and was able to open the app on both profiles on the computer.

I ran a new fresh Composer snapshot and found that the permissions didn't change. After changing them and running the new DMG to test machines I was able to upgrade from an older version to the new version and run them on both profiles that I had.

Thanks again for everyone's help!

If you're building deployable packages of apps that are simple install/drag-and-drop installations (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) I highly highly recommend using Packages.

http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html

You can see it in action on @rtrouton's blog here: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/building-simple-packages-with-packages/

Thanks for the link @emilykausalik! I'll give this a shot and see what happens. Looks pretty easy to use and may help out a lot with other installs.