CS3 Strategies

Hello Everyone,

Great responses, and I'll add on my two cents for what it's worth.

We started our deployment using the standard Composer packaging process, which took a few attempts to get it to work. JAMF at that time hadn't implemented the Adobe CS3 installer framework at this point so you didn't have much choice. As John Brenner mentions there are differences in the Acrobat line of product from PPC and Intel. Reader was particularly fun if you wanted to deploy that...if you install Reader when CS3 is not present it installs totally different from when you install Reader with CS3 present, and again two separate packages for Intel and PPC. The canned large package worked fine, but then you have to update that package as time goes. Benefit, it tended to be a faster install with less failures.

Enter the Adobe CS3 framework into the JSS. Sweet, I don't have to make a pack, I just upload a DMG and the DMG updaters. It's too bad Adobe pretty much sucked on their part of the deal, or are very inconsistent. JAMF has done an excellent job of dealing with the different types of setup.app different applications came with. So now we use this method. And again, people have pretty much nailed all the key points. If existing software is there it can flip out. The fact that the software isn't licensed at first run is a known issue by Adobe, but from what I know they don't intend to do anything about it? And many of the updates we have do hang or never end, particularly on some of the older iMac systems. I've been trying to sort out which ones are more of a culprit, like flashlight perhaps, amongst others. Yes, running Photoshop first is the best option.

The only thing beyond this that we've done is to better deal with mixed suites of CS3, for example Design Premium and Web Standard for example. I could be wrong here, but once you start mixing serialization things tend to break. Let's say you want to deploy CS3 Premiere Pro later, with a different serialization. That may break your previous installs. We purchased one set of the Adobe Master Collection so we had two things: 1) A serialization number to use everywhere that encompassed all applications so no conflicts 2) access to download electronically the single DMG file of Master Collection so all of the CS3 applications where in one JSS Adobe Install. I'm not sure everyone gets access to the electronic downloads, but if you do this don't try to download it from the page, don't try to download it with their accelerator software on a Windows machine...just use the directions for a regular ole FTP client and wait.

We still purchase Design Premium and Web Standard licenses that we track usage for with KeyServer, and when I make the installer in Casper Admin for Design Premium, naturally I only deploy the proper components to comply.

Since we started using that things have worked well, and the only thing we have left plaguing us are getting the updates to not hang. By the time that gets sorted out, if at all, Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be out with the same issues I'm sure.

Craig Ernst
Systems Management & Configuration
----------------------------------
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Learning & Technology Services
105 Garfield Ave
Eau Claire, WI 54701
Phone: (715) 836-3639
Fax: (715) 836-6001
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ernstcs at uwec.edu

I had some issues in the beginning. What I ended up doing is setting up
a policy on a set VLAN on a managed switch. So, that policy only would
go out to a set range of IPs. Since all my users are laptops I would
have them come plug it into that VLAN and reboot and they would get CS3
pushed down to them. Then you would have to run the application once,
to get all the first run info, quit it and rerun the application again,
and all licenses would take. I also did the same thing with a lab of
imacs but I deployed it using a smart group. For the most part it
worked as long as I ran the application twice at the very beginning.

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
cell: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

We utilize a script to run Photoshop after installing CS3. Photoshop will start up without asking for the first run info, and that will serialize all of the apps.

The script:

#!/bin/sh

open /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Adobe Photoshop CS3.app/

echo "Done"

We are a small location, so I just push CS3 during the imaging process. I don't really care how long it takes because, to use Ronco, I "Set it, and forget it".

Steve Wood
Director, Information Technology
swood at integerdallas.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6907 | C 940.312.2475

For this Academic Year we have used the special CS3 functionality of On 13 Jun 2008, at 14:11, Paul Austin wrote:
Casper and have had extremely mixed results. Although CS3 installs correctly and is registered etc the Adobe updaters generally just stop working. Because the Adobe patchers never complete successfully we then have issues with the jamfHelper app refusing to allow logons. Even if jamfHelper does quit, a user logging in is confronted by the remnants of the failed installation such as unmountable disk images. In the JSS each package is set to have the Dock icon suppressed but that doesn't work either!

It would be nice to know if anyone has got CS3 installation working correctly...

I'm now off to file some bug reports!

James

-- James Nairn mailto:jwrn3 at cam.ac.uk
Macintosh Systems Specialist University of Cambridge Computing Service
Pembroke St, Cambridge, CB2 3QH Tel (01223 7)63486

I have read back in the archives of this list and found the instructions for
doing a setup capture on CS3. Has anyone had better luck with that method?

Paul

This summer is my first attempt with CS3 as well. I'm having the same issue as James; CS3 installs correctly, but the updates get stuck. I'd love to hear how someone got their installation working, too.

Eric Anderson
Director of Information Technology
Archbishop Mitty High School

I deployed about 200 installs of CS3 this last school year with little
problems. However, I did not update the product, and I did not allow
the users to update it. I didn't want to deal with that, haha, but if
it came down it and it had to be updated I just ran it manually. Thankfully, my users didn't seem to need any updates. It was CS3
premium, but I think the bulk of them just use PS and Illustrator.

Next year will be different though because I hear the classes are
changing. So, I will have to wait until the design teacher emails me.

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
cell: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

The biggest issue that we have had with the CS3 installers are
1. They must be clean installs, by this I mean there cannot be any remnants
of Adobe CS3 or CS3 like products installed prior to a Casper CS3 install.
2. Time CS3 installs take forever. On a dual g4 I have timed it a 3 plus
hours. 3. Updaters: If the updater is applied to a standard Casper package it likes
to fail.

Standard Casper install and CS3
1. Acrobat is Funky at best and there are differences between PPC and Intel
installs. 2. Updates break the installs

I am not having issues with the updates. Have you checked the log files?

I can't remember the specifics, but I swear I upgraded a CS2 lab to CS3
with the casper package....

Perhaps I ran pre script to just rm everything that Adobe puts out there
but I don't think I did that. It was too long ago to remember the
exacts though.

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
cell: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

Yeah, if you have any Adobe product on the system, the CS3 install will fail miserably. You have to run a pre-install script to remove all current Adobe products.

And we too have had issues with the updates. InDesign will sit there running for ever until you kill it. And it doesn't kill easy. I haven't gotten a chance to delve too deeply into it yet.

Steve Wood
Director, Information Technology
swood at integerdallas.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6907 | C 940.312.2475

CS2 Lives ok with CS3 my problems were specific to Acrobat 8 even reader.
Specifically the issues is the /Library/Application Support/Adobe folder.
Something gets installed that conflicts with CS3 installs. I remove and
reinstall the Adobe common package after the CS3 install.

I'm coming to this thread a bit late but hope to spare others some pain by contributing. Before I do that though I'd like to say that the Adobe CS3 installers and updaters have given me the most grief of any application I have encountered in over 14 years of system administration. First year Computer Science under-graduates wouldn't make some of the elementary mistakes in design that Adobe make. If I ever meet an Adobe executive I'll be requesting a week of my life back please!

Like others I could only get this to work by removing all traces of existing Adobe installations prior to installing CS3. If there was any trace of CS2 or CS3 the installation attempts failed. Many parts of the suite use different updaters, with no consistency in the software used or the naming scheme. I could only get this to work by creating individual Casper packages of each update using Composer, then carefully considering where the dependencies between different installers lay and modifying 'Priority' accordingly. Finally I layered everything together in a CS3 config and deployed that.

Why Adobe can't get with the 21st Century and create package installers for all these apps is beyond me. Adobe need to improve this in CS4 but I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers,

Wylie