Adobe Reader 9

[tlarkin]

How do you all deploy this? Self healing and admin rights are annoying. The developer of this digital text book hardcoded their app to use Adobe Reader, which sucks. I think I may actually try to hack this text book to make it so that it just uses preview.app.

I tried tweaking all these XML files but I still have issues.

Thanks,

Tom

[rmanly]

What issues are you having and are you using Network accounts, Mobile
accounts, or local non-admin?

I have given it the ol' one - two punch of pushing MCX and also editing the
XML as shown here:

http://itmac.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/adobe-acrobat-admin-password-self-heal-problems/

This works for my students (Mobile accounts created at login, not sync'd and
not admins). I have a friend in a neighboring district that is tackling
network accounts and he is having some different problems.

FYI, I have also run into this issue in Reader 9.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/333/333592.html

To get it all working I have captured Reader via the built-in diff and then
created a separate package that I push with the self-heal XML files in it. I
set the priority so that no matter whether I install Reader or Acrobat Pro
the XML dmg always lays down afterwards.

Ryan M. Manly
Glenbrook High Schools

[tlarkin]

Ryan,

I found that link via google and it still asks for admin rights. All users are mobile accounts.

[tlarkin]

I used textwrangler to find all strings of YES and replace with NO and all strings of INSTALL and changed to NO and still no dice. It still asks for admin password....I really hate Adobe reader. Gonna try the MCX thing next I guess.

[tlarkin]

I mean REQUIRED changed to NO, not install

[rmanly]

I hate Adobe ;)

I am also pushing Casper's templates for the MCX that is supposed to
accomplish the same thing. This has never worked on its own however, even
when I tried to do it via Workgroup Manager over a year ago.

I just looked at my reader_9.3.3.dmg and noticed that I am doing FEU and FUT
for the package.

~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.acrobat.90.sh.plist and
~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Reader_x86_9.0.plist are included (among
many other things). The first includes these lines:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "
http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>NoReaderSelfHealNeeded Feb 27 2009</key>
<true/>
<key>NoReaderSelfHealNeeded Jun 19 2010</key>
<true/>
<key>NoViewerSelfHealNeeded Jun 12 2008</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

I didn't edit these by hand so they were either captured from the diff or
perhaps I did a .fsevents style capture with Composer and got them that
way...

Also,

I have read somewhere that people aren't having success via the XML method
if they have both Reader and Acrobat Pro but it does work for me.

I really wish the Reader / Acrobat Pro guys would make this easier. The AIR
installer is a dream compared to all the other products.

Ryan M. Manly
Glenbrook High Schools

[rmanly]

After seeing all of this laid out I am again frustrated. There is no
consistency to what people are claiming works…including myself.

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this, once and for all.

~Ryan

[#8]

I've had luck modifying the xml file located within the Reader app itself:

Adobe Reader.app > Contents > MacOS > RdrENU90SelfHeal.xml

As someone else mentioned, I used TextWrangler and replaced the following and replaced them with "NO":

REQUIRED
YES
FIRSTRUNONLY

That seemed to do the trick of us. Didn't even need to bother with the com.adobe.Reader_x86_9.0.plist file in the user's folder.

Travis

[rmanly]

I am pretty sure I tried this as well but when I would login with a student
account Reader would just hang at the splash screen. I just confirmed that
the package I push does not include the changes at this location. I wonder
if this will work for Tom.

I wish I had time to do some thorough experimenting and take some good
notes…I want to know the truth of the Reader fix.

inb4 "You can't handle the truth!"

Ryan M. Manly
Glenbrook High Schools

[tlarkin]

Confirmed working just now. I did a clean install on an admin account, and configured it to work with the digital text book. Then I modified the self heal plist file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat, and changed every value of YES and REQUIRED to NO. I then manually copied all my user level property lists in ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe* to my test mobile user account. Applied proper ownerships. Logged in my test user account and it worked.

So, now I need to go through my composer capture, and get rid of all the junk, and FUT and FEU and then make a post install script that cleans up the admin account after the FEU FUT happens.

However, I think I got it working.