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Aspera Connect - thank you IBM for this lovely "package"

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donmontalvo
Esteemed Contributor III

Posted on ‎09-24-2015 02:57 PM

Has anyone taken a look at Aspera Connect 3.5.2.x? Owned by IBM, and until today not listed under Third-Party Products, it is distributed as an .app installer, with the requisite PKG icon, probably a hint that IBM thinks we won't notice. It has a 501 line .script (AppleScript) intrusive script embedded in it. It has an embedded flat *.mpkg installer, that has embedded scripts with such lovely syntax as:

Apparently the person writing the preflight script doesn't believe in close quotes...

if [ $is_admin = "yes" ] ; then
  echo removing system wide apps
  rm -rf /Applications/Aspera Connect.app
  rm -rf /Applications/Aspera Crypt.app
  echo removing system wide plugin 
  rm -rf /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web.plugin
  rm -rf /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web.webplugin
  # this is for versioned plugin dirs
  rm -rf /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web*
fi

echo removing local user plugin 
rm -rf ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web.plugin
rm -rf ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web.webplugin
rm -rf ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Aspera Web*

echo exiting preflight

The postflight littered with copy/pasted blocks of unquoted commands like...

    rmdir "$source_dir/Library/Internet Plug-Ins" || echo $target_dir/Library/Internet Plug-Ins not empty
    rmdir "$source_dir/Library" || echo $target_dir/Library not empty

(believe it, the snippet is unedited...the required quotes did not disappear into the ether)

I'm writing this a second time, since IBM's Aspera Connect developers felt it was OK to force my browsers to close.

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mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Posted on ‎04-12-2016 07:56 AM

As long as the structure of that .mf file doesn't change from one version to the next (only the version string within it), then the following should work to pull the version into an EA:

#!/bin/sh

productinfo="/Applications/Aspera Connect.app/Contents/Resources/product-info.mf"

if [ -e "$productinfo" ]; then
    version=$(awk -F'>|<' '/<version>/{print $3; exit}' "$productinfo")
    echo "<result>$version</result>"
else
    echo "<result>N/A</result>"
fi

If that file's structure changes at all, the above could break though.

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cwaldrip
Valued Contributor

Posted on ‎02-19-2021 11:40 AM

@H3144-IT , the 3rd party product link only links to the normal installer which is crap isn't the system-side version. Their page for system-wide version hasn't been updated and all the links are broken (https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/how-install-ibm-aspera-connect-system-wide-mac).
The answer to the question though was the IBM File Search! Yay!
So after creating an account (because I just love more spam) and going through a few screens about how they will 'use' my data, I got to the page where I could download a system-wide version of the app. Clear as mud, IBM. :-|

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