Creating dmg's and pckg's for deployment via Casper Help Please!!

[nmilano]

Hi everyone,

I'm a super newbie to the JAMF Nation software and the Casper Suite. I really need some simple instructions on how best to use an existing dmg (Sibelius 7) and if possible tweak it so that I can specify a licence server in the package as well as other stuff. Once this is done how then can I get the dmg or pkg into Casper admin for deployment?

This might sound like dumb questions but as I said I am a super newbie to all of this and the JAMF documentation dosen't really cut it when trying to explain these processes in laymens terms. Any assistance would be kindly appreciated.

Thanks.

[mike_paul]

Hello Nicholas, Welcome to the Nation. You posed a good question that gets brought up often. For anybody that knows me, i get long winded so I apologize for the length of this post but there is a lot of things to consider when building packages.

As many admins in the past have expressed, package building and deployment is more of an art than anything. There are multiple routes to accomplish goals and you just need to figure out what works best for you and the software you are trying to deploy.

Although the instructions seem high level, we do have some step by step instructions for building packages (pages 62 of the Administrator Guide - http://www.jamfsoftware.com/sites/default/files/Casper_Suite_Administrators_Guide.pdf) and uploading packages (page 114 of the Admin Guide or page 13 of the Quick Start Guide - http://www.jamfsoftware.com/sites/default/files/Casper_Suite_8.7_QuickStart_Guide_for_Client_Managem...)

But it is important to understand what the Casper Suite can work with in regards to 3rd party installers.

You can typically deploy installers (pkg or mpkg) created by 3rd party vendors since we would just be copying down the installer package and calling the built in Installer.app to complete the task. Although Casper Admin would accept DMGs from 3rd party vendors, your deployment is not going to work as desired since a 3rd party DMG wouldn't have a correct folder structure (/Applications/AppName.app).

So again, 3rd party pkg/mpkgs typically work, 3rd party DMGs wouldn't.

Just keep in mind, deploying a 3rd party pkg/mpkg via Casper would be essentially the same as you just running that installer on the actual machine, i.e. things may still need to be configured for licenses and other settings.

Typically 3rd party DMGs are used as a wrapper around just an .app bundle or an installer to protect its contents, which is what it appears to be for your Sibelius software. The DMG you downloaded has an installer (pkg) inside that can be deployed with the Casper Suite. If you were to try to deploy the DMG you downloaded it would just place the pkg at the root of the hard drive since the folder structure of that DMG is "/Install Sibelius 7.pkg" and not run it. Also, we do have means to have pkgs/mpkgs deployed wrapped in a dmg, but thats for another discussion (https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProductFile.html?id=3&fid=547)

On the other hand, you can deploy both DMGs and PKGs created by our package building software Composer via the Casper Suite.

Some third party pkgs/mpkgs can be modified prior to deployment to allow for serialization and suppression of EULA, Software Updates, etc. Since I am not familiar with this software, I can not speak to customization of their installer or remote serialization possibilities.

But in downloading the demo and poking around, it does appear that if you deploy the "Install Sibelius 7.pkg" via Casper Admin it would require the end users to be Admins (prompted for Admin password for serialization on first launch) and I don't see any built in ways to modify the installer or deploy a serial after the fact. This may be something that would need to be discussed with the software manufacturer in order to figure out if it is possible.

Because of these reasons, your best route for testing deployment of this software may be using Composer to build a package from Snapshots (again, page 62 of the Admin guide). Although the Admin guide explains it much better in more detail, you asked for it in simple terms.

When you do a snapshot in Composer, it makes a list of everything on your machine, then you run your software installer that you downloaded from the vendor and configure it (enter serial or configure to point to license server, suppress EULA, configure software updates, etc), and then take the second snapshot. Then Composer compares the two snapshots and builds a package out of those things that it found that had changed. The two main types of Snapshots are "Normal" and "New and Modified". "Normal" looks for anything added to the system between snapshots while "New and Modified" looks for anything added and/or modified (such as existing system files that were in place prior to you running the installer but were modified by the installer). Its very important to look through what was captured in the Snapshots and remove any files that may have been modified/created during that time that do not pertain to your installation (for example, /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist)

Then you should be able to build a pkg or a dmg from Composer that would include the license and any other settings you may have configured, upload it to Casper Admin and deploy via a Policy or Casper Remote. All of these things are laid out very nicely in the Quick Start Guide mentioned above.

You can spend a lot of time talking about pkgs vs flat pkgs vs dmgs; but it really depends on your end goal for each project and can only be figured out via testing.

If you want some more hands on training for building packages and all of the ins and outs of the Casper Suite, I would recommend any of our certification courses; CSE, CCA, CMA and CJA if you want to get into the backend setup. I might be biased on the value of those courses but its widely accepted that they are extremely valuable to any Casper admin.

Good luck with it all, and let us know if you have any other questions.

-Mike

[nigelg]

I have just created a Sibelius package including the licence server details for my organisation and I am getting a "Sibelius 7 - unspecified error (1)" after deployment.

[Joseph_Morris]

Did you check the boxes for Fill User Templates and Fill Existing Users when you set up the package in Casper Admin? I know there are some applications that will not deploy correctly if you don't fill the existing users.

[Matt]

Sibelius and ProTools are extremely difficult to push out due to the way they verify licensing.