deploying dropbox

[tlarkin]

So, per request I am to deploy dropbox from:

www.dropbox.com

The problem is, it requires admin rights to set up each individual account it looks like. I don't think I can capture the package with a diff and authenticate because it will tie the app to my personal dropbox account, which would be a bad idea.

Anyone deploy this (the free version) to non admin users? I am currently looking into solutions myself.

Thanks, Tom

[donmontalvo]

Check out "Margin Call" with Demi Moore...she raised flags about something that was wrong and could cause the company harm in the future. She didn't raise enough of a stink so they decided to make her the fall guy (or gal).

When something like this happens (management dismissing risk/liability/tco concerns), I send out blasts to all the key management so nobody can say they did not know. Squeaky wheel, prolly. But you'd be surprised how handy these stern warnings could be to upper management who themselves are afraid to say "no" to their own powers that be, until you arm them with the right info. :)

Don

[jarednichols]

"I have an *autographed get-out-of-jail-free card*! "The President of the United States authorizes Deputy Director of the CIA Robert Ritter to conduct 'Operation Reciprocity' including all necessary funding and support. This action is deemed important to the national security of the United States etcetera, etcetera, etcetera." You don't *have* one of these, do you Jack?"
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[tlarkin]

Update:

It seems after you deploy the app it wants to install some resources in /Library/Application Support/ so I captured those and am now testing to see if it works with managed accounts. It doesn't do this until after you run the app itself, hopefully it is not user specific.

FYI

-Tom

[rockpapergoat]

i believe all the personal config is stored under ~/.dropbox, so your approach may work. users will have to plug in their own authentication when prompted.

[sean]

Thomas,

I don't recall this. We had to stop using it, but our package in Casper is just the Application itself in /Applications/ and nothing else.

The users have their own log in which they created. Saying that, I was fortunate enough that someone else did the deploy to the department for me. They never mentioned having to go to each machine to set this up, but that doesn't mean that they didn't. I'm not seeing the proxy configuration anywhere in the Composed package and he must have configured this, so maybe he did do a bunch of manual stuff.

As an aside, here is the background as to why we stopped using it.

We use nfs automounts via yp maps. Dropbox would (completely unnecessarily in my mind) touch all of these (even though it has a configuration to tell it what to sync) and hence every single nfs server (that's about 150 for us) would then become mounted, destroying the whole use of using automounts!

Of course, Apple still haven't fixed automount in Finder on Lion, so I guess that it wouldn't matter at the moment for Lion machines!!!

Sean

[tlarkin]

Thanks guys,

It seems that dropbox creates it's own folder in /Library with helper tools (instead of say /Library/Application Support like developers should do) which was snagging up the process. I think that tool helps create the local folders in the user's home directory so they can access their dropbox.

I personally, did not want to deploy this because I have zero control. Lost passwords, or data is gone and IT can do nothing about it. However, my opinion was noted and disregarded so now I am deploying it.

Thanks, Tom

[jarednichols]

Powers At Be™ are aware of the fairly recent privacy fracas with Dropbox, yes?

j
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[tlarkin]

Doesn't matter...

When I asked if we could turn on 802.1x/RADIUS on our wireless due to
my current keychain debacle I was told no. Then I say that passkeys are
stored in clear text in a user's login.keychain and I was told that no
one wants to "complicate" our network so just give out the passkey.

Not gonna worry about things out of my control....otherwise I'd be
really stressed out.

-Tom

[tlarkin]

Academia is all about getting it to the end user first and security last. If a security consultant came in and saw our infrastructure I am pretty sure they would explode like the scene from Big Trouble in Little China.

We are actually pilot testing google docs, but with such a large user base we have to make sure this is the route we want to go. Everything we do in education is very customer service oriented, and since no one in IT really has any pull (my boss has bosses) we work with what we got the best we can.

I email my boss and supervisor directly and tell them how I feel about certain things and lay down the facts along with the pros/cons and they note it and I do whatever it is they decide. That is my job after all.

-Tom

[tlarkin]

Actually I think I may have a case to stop the deployment now....

I brought up a liability issue. Liability tends to get people's attention. However, but it seems you can package it up for automated deployment by capturing the files when a user first runs the app, but then delete any user specific preferences. So far it has seemed to work in my small testing. FYI in case anyone else has to deploy it.

Thanks guys,

Tom

[davelb20]

Tom,

My management asked for dropbox as well, but for IOS devices. In our working environment, that would not be possible. So I offered an alternative, using WebDAV. I set up a webdav server over https, which can be mounted by regular users on windows, linux, and mac very easily. As an added bonus a lot of IOS apps support WebDAV out of the box.

Dave

On 10/24/11 4:49 PM, "Thomas Larkin" <tlarki at kckps.org> wrote:

Actually I think I may have a case to stop the deployment now....

I brought up a liability issue. Liability tends to get people's attention. However, but it seems you can package it up for automated deployment by capturing the files when a user first runs the app, but then delete any user specific preferences. So far it has seemed to work in my small testing. FYI in case anyone else has to deploy it.

Thanks guys,

Tom

[cdenoia]

Hey guys,

I was able to resolve the admin credential issue on Dropbox v.1.4.17 by deleting the following two files:

/Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Resources/DropboxHelperInstaller.tgz

/Library/DropboxHelperTools/DropboxHelperInstaller

Hope this helps!

Best,
Chris