Cache Packages During Imaging

[ChickenDenders]

Hello!

I would like some clarification on the Casper Imaging utility. Looking for recommendations regarding caching packages.

We've got a couple versions of the Adobe Suite, Maya, and Cinema4D for all their yearly releases. These can take a very long time to deploy straight from a policy, so I'm hoping to see some improvement by caching them during imaging and then using a policy to install the cached packages after, instead.

What is the best way to go about this? I can see on Casper Imaging, there is a checkbox to "Cache Files". Does this cache them to the target computer to be later installed by a policy, or do something else? Does hitting that checkbox also cache any Firstboot scripts that are supposed to be running? Initial testing is pointing to the latter, which I don't want!

My setup is just a fresh OSX 10.12 image created with AutoDMG, and then a firstboot script. Restart into Netboot, Imaging profile is set to Autorun - just sit back and wait. Everything else is set to install via policy, after the imaging is completed. I'm very close to restarting a computer and having it fully configured when it comes back up.

Open to suggestions for a better workflow if you've got them!

[mm2270]

I'm not a Casper Imaging user, so I can't necessarily give you exact guidance on all this, but I can tell you that the Cache files option is only for AutoRun, which is something you'd use for re-imaging runs. AutoRun is used a lot in lab setups where you re-image systems regularly and want to make sure all software deployments that happened in the time between last image and now are re-applied automatically. So it's not what you're looking for in this case.

I think how I'd handle this, though perhaps a little out of the norm, would be to package up all these installers in Composer to drop them into a custom location/folder, like /Library/Application Support/Installs/ or /private/var/installs/ etc. Have those installs, that really just drop the true installation pkgs into place, run as part of initial imaging. Then in a first boot script or some script called by a policy right after enrollment, and after the Mac boots into it's final OS, I would have it loop over all installation packages in that folder and install them using the installer command line option. In other words, I would create a custom cache location and then script the installations.
The nice thing about this is, similar to using Jamf's Install All Cached option, you can simply have the script install anything that lands in that directory and clean up after each one so it doesn't leave any cached packages in place. The script doesn't need to know which packages to install. Just have it install everything in that directory. As you update your packages that do that custom caching later on, the same script should continue to work as is without modification.

That is only one option. I'm sure others will chime in with other ideas.