Adobe Updates

[#1]

Okay, this may have been covered in the list already, but since I just started "watching" in April, I haven't seen it. I wanted to find out how everyone is handling Adobe updates to the CS3 suite. Specifically, how are you figuring out what Adobe updates need to be applied, and how are you gathering them? The one way I have thought of is to allow the Adobe updater to download the files without installing them, and then grab the Install folder from the ~/Library/ Application Support/Adobe/Updater5/Install folder. The only problem I can think of is the install order: how do we determine that?

Anyone care to share?

Thanks.

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

[#2]

Thanks Miles. I was actually looking to be a little lazier than that. ;-)

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

[#3]

How does everyone out there handle getting the Adobe updates for CS products? We have the Master Suite of CS3, and I would really like to get all of the updates into Casper, but I really don't want to spend an afternoon downloading them one by one from Adobe. That and I am not 100% certain of the install order.

I know that inside of ~/L/AS/Adobe/Updater5/Install is where Adobe places the files, but what's the easiest way to get them to stay there and determine the install order?

Thanks guys & gals.

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

[milesleacy]

Put the .dmg from Adobe into Casper Admin. Use the "Adobe Install" option (see page 174 in the Casper Suite Documentation).

If an update is not recognized (it may happen when an update first comes out) as an Adobe Installer image, contact JAMF support.

[#5]

Yeah, I've got that part, but I'm more concerned with determining the install order for updates. For example, if I install Master Suite on a fresh machine and then let the Adobe updater download the updaters, what is the easiest way to determine the install order? Or are you saying that Casper will take care of that part?

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

[#6]

I may have just answered my own question by looking closer at the files the udpater downloads. They are, for the most part, numbered in sequential order per product. However, does anyone know if Adobe cares what product is updated first? So if I have updates for Camera RAW and Photoshop, do I have to Photoshop then Camera RAW, or does it matter?

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

[milesleacy]

I don't know about Adobe's requirements, but the download page for update "X" should note things like "Please install update "Y" before installing this update".

If you find a necessary order, you can set different priorities for the different installs. Remember, Casper installs items alphabetically within a particular priority level.

[#8]

Hi,

Is their anyway of running Adobe Update from command line like the software update, softwareupdate -i -a? Not all my machines have all Adobe applications and it would be much easier to trigger off an update that way.

Best wishes

Michael

[Kedgar]

Sorry, I have not deployed adobe updates using Casper Suite yet, but would
like to. I have a chance to test it out shortly for CS4 Premium to a small
group of users.

I was able to bring the latest updates into Casper Admin and mark them as
Adobe installers. I also gave them priorities based on the order of which
the Adobe Updater runs them. How does everyone here deploy the updates? Are there any gotchas? Im assuming I have to re-package the Acrobat and
the Adobe Updater for deployment.

Thanks,
Ken Edgar

[pbachuwa]

This is what I had to do

Acrobat can’t be patched through the normal Adobe Patch process; We had to install CS4 with all the updates excluding the Acrobat patches. Opened composer and did a New and modified snapshot and then installed Acrobat patches and then I built this package.

Patrick Bachuwa

Client Technical Services

Sears Holdings Corporation

Michigan Campus

3000 W. 14 Mile Road

Royal Oak, MI 48073-1717

Phone: 248 637-0350

[talkingmoose]

I use Casper for Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop CS4 updates.
On 5/7/10 3:15 PM, "ken edgar" <ken.edgar at gmail.com> wrote:
These install flawlessly for me.

Also, I soon plan to be using Casper for Acrobat 9.x updates (part of CS4)
as well using the method described here
<http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/silent-installs-for-acrobat-pro
-9-updates/>.

In my testing, this works a treat!

I can take an Acrobat 9.0.0 installation and update it to 9.3.2 (current) in
just a few minutes using the existing .dmg updates and the script provided
in the link.

In a nutshell, Greg Neagle with MacEnterprise.org has determined that all
the Acrobat 9.x updaters (so far) are calling python scripts within
themselves. He's written a single script that will call the python script in
each updater application and run the installer silently.

My plan is to package all the Acrobat 9.x updates plus the script and
install them into the /tmp directory. An "After Reboot" script will call the
script and run it. The /tmp directory is automatically cleared at reboot.

For future Acrobat 9.x updates where the script still works, I'll use a
policy to push the new updates and run the script again.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

[donmontalvo]

Greg Neagle...does he work for JAMF (yet)? He should. Really. :)

Don

[stevewood]

He's got too nice a gig at Disney to ever leave.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[RobertHammen]

Be EXTREMELY careful with snapshotting Acrobat updates. I did so in the 9.1-9.1.3 days, only to discover that users had issues when trying to fill out forms (text fields remained blank when they typed, even though the cursor moved).
On May 7, 2010, at 3:19 PM, Bachuwa, Patrick wrote:

What I ended up doing, which worked rather well, was to snapshot Acrobat (I have a bunch of standalone Acrobat users, and a few CS4/suite), before install, then install + apply all updates and build a package (one for standalone, one for CS4) to install just the entire 9.3.x Application folder. Worked extremely well, didn't have to depend on the updaters chaining/running multiple updates per machine.

--Robert