AirMedia Installation

[sepiemoini]

Hey there, all! I'm trying to install AirMedia to client machines in my organization via a push policy and also extend availability in Self Service. The problem that I am running into is that at the end of the AirMedia installation wizard, a window titled "VersionChecker_Crestron_HD_Presenter" appears asking the user to install Soundflower as it's needed for audio functionality.

I thought that this was strange and just added the Soundflower installer into the policy and set the priority such that the Soundflower installer runs before AirMedia. No such luck here either as the the same window prompts. I grabbed the PKG for AudioMedia directly from Crestron (link below).

I guess I could run Composer and extract the "VersionChecker_Crestron_HD_Presenter" window but would prefer to leave the installer intact and add a script to suppress the window. How does this sound? Is there another approach that I should consider?

http://www.crestron.com/downloads/software/AirMedia_OS_X_installer_1.0.4.1.pkg

[mm2270]

I don't know anything about this software, so just taking a shot in the dark, but its possible the Soundflower installer needs to install components into the logged in user's account. There may be a postinstall script inside the pkg installer that add items to the user account or something. If so, when you install it from a Casper policy, even one from Self Service, its running as root, so it wouldn't be adding the items to the logged in user's home.

I would drop the Soundflower installer into Composer and try converting it to source to examine the package. It may reveal what its doing and what its specifically adding. There are other ways of deconstructing it outside of Composer, so of course use whatever method you are comfortable with to do that.

[AVmcclint]

I encountered this as well with the 1.0.4.1 version. I ended up just installing it on my Mac and using Composer to package up the /Applications/Crestron/ folder. We don't have a need to project sound so I didn't bother with SoundFlower. It seems to work for our purposes.

[CorpTech]

@AVmcclint I did that exact same thing. You can get the .pkg file from crestron too. I found that installing the sound driver did some weird things with default audio too.

[joecurrin]

Soundflower is "special." It once decided to remove my sound card, I had to archive and install to fix the issue.

[sepiemoini]

Very helpful suggestions so far, all--thanks! But man oh man, is this installer persistent. I get the below message regardless of whether Soundflower is included in the installer or not. I even took a snapshot of the package AFTER I hit "do not show this message again."

Any ideas on getting rid of this little fella attached below?

[mm2270]

That may be coming from that "VersionChecker" app that gets installed. Did you also exclude that from your final package? Or, is that actually a needed item for the software to function?

[sepiemoini · Accepted solution]

@mm2270 I think I've got it! I removed all instances of Soundflower from the package contents from Composer as suggested. In the policy itself, I added Soundflower as a separate package altogether and altered the priority so it's installed before the AirMedia package. I am no longer getting any errors or prompts so I think, aside from IP issue that appears to be an internal issue, I'm all set--thanks!

[gachowski]

So it's been a while..and this isn't going to help...but

Our video team was testing options and when they want to run a beta for AirMedia, I pointed out that they were using a app that had a second app installed and that wasn't a good idea .. then I looked in to SoundFlower and I think that Apple removed it from the apps store ... I got the vibe that it was circumventing Apple's app design rules and hijacking the audio.

I think SoundFlower used a kernel extension and I would be willing to bet that it's not Apple approved for SIP and El Cap..

However this was two year ago and I have a bad memory ...

C

[taugust04]

I'm pretty sure that the AirMedia client for Mac specifically states its only supported up to OS X 10.8 because SoundFlower only works reliably up to OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5. I'm pretty sure the SoundFlower project has been abandoned for a few years now.

As for packaging, I used Composer to just grab the contents from the Applications folder and everything worked as expected on all OS X installs from 10.6.8 -> 10.11.2. Of course, without SoundFlower working audio is not supported.

[sepiemoini]

The IP issue now resolved and WAS an internal issue. The networking folks here were in the midst of some small exercise. I now have this running with SoundFlower v2.0 on my 10.11.2 machine. Thanks all :)