Composer 10.7.1 and permissions

[mconners]

Hello Everyone,

I have run into a peculiar problem with Composer 10.7.1.

We are attempting to create a package to put into the appropriate folders, the login window branded for our college. In the past, we would place an image file specifically named, com.apple.desktop.admin.png file in the /Library/Caches folder to change the login window and this worked well for High Sierra.

For the same effect on Mojave, the file needs to be named, Mojave.heic and placed in the /Library/Desktop Pictures folder.

We would use Composer to drag and drop these two files into a blank Composer to capture this setup for these two files in these specific locations. We would save this as a .pkg file and all should be well.

With Composer 10.7.1, we are finding Composer is changing the permissions of the files and thus, causing these files to not be excutable by the system.

As seen in Composer for the .pkg file that was created.

If we save the package as a dmg, the permissions are retained.

As seen in Composer for the .dmg file that was created.

The question is, have any of you run into Composer changing the permissions?

Just wondering if I am doing something wrong, but in all honesty, it doesn't feel like it. I have two files in a package and we save it. Not much more to it.

I can use the .dmg version so I can get around it, but this behavior is odd.

Thoughts?

[diradmin]

@mconners Have seen this as well with Composer 10.6.0, and even as far back as 9.101.4. I'd escalate to Jamf Support, if you haven't done so already.

[mconners]

Thanks @stephen.perry-GS, I have opened a ticket with support as well. I haven't seen this behavior with older versions of Composer, but I should go back and attempt this same thing. We will try this with an older version of Composer to see if we see different results. I'll try that next, thanks!

[mconners]

@stephen.perry-GS just a follow up. Composer 10.6.0 does the same thing. Funny, I haven't seen this before. Perhaps, this has been happening for awhile now? We have a workaround in place. I might tinker around with older versions of Composer and see what happens. I haven't needed to do this for about a year. Now we are preparing for Mojave.

We will see what support tells me.

[diradmin]

@mconners Thanks for the follow up. We've only encountered this a select few times, and have simply worked around by modifying the permissions of the source files in question through Terminal directly before building out the package.

[mconners]

Interesting. I went back to 10.1.1 and I am now getting an error, finally.

This doesn't tell me what is wrong per se, but at least this makes sense. It isn't setting the permissions the way I am wishing because Composer can't do it. We will see if I can get at this another way.

[AVmcclint]

I can't believe this is still happening. As someone said above, this has been happening since later versions of 9.x. I usually see it when I package up the Jamf apps for distribution on other admin Macs. And even then it is oddly specific in the files and permissions it changes.

[sdagley]

@mconners If you're building as a .pkg you can add a postinstall script that sets the permissions on the files to what you want after installation to avoid the Composer problem.

[matadoro2]

I'm sure a cursory Googling would get me an adequate answer, but ... how does one install other applications if they're on Lion? Or do you have to unlock the permissions each time?

[sdagley]

@matadoro2 Are you thinking this is a thread about MacOS 10.7.x Lion? This thread started regarding an issue with .pkg installers built with version 10.7.1 of Jamf's Composer app. Unless you were joking? If so, good one. :-)

[diradmin]

FYI, this issue still persists under Composer 10.8.0.