Self Service and .app Installers

[monaronyc]

What's up Group!

Looks like Self Service will not let us configure .apps for user installation. Found that out the hard way! We're trying to setup an installer for Dropbox. What's the usual process for .apps on the Mac? Without having to touch each machine manually. Any thoughts on how we can push this out?

[mm2270]

There are a few options.
One, you can simply rewrap the .app installer into either a PKG or DMG installer in Composer. The process to do this, very high level is:

1. Drag/copy the app to your Applications folder (or wherever you want it to be installed) on your admin Mac.
2. Launch the app at least once to clear any Apple quarantine flags from it.
3. Open Composer.app and cancel out of any automatic windows that come up.
4. Drag the .app into the Composer sidebar and it will create a new Source with the path to where it should be installed (like /Applications/Dropbox.app). You can then create a package from it (assuming you don't need to adjust anything with it, like permissions, etc first)

Other ways you can accomplish this:

a) Look around on here and in the scripts sections for some scripts created by JAMF I believe that allow you to use DMG files from vendors for installations. I think its called "install-from-DMG" or something like that. Sorry, don't have the exact name or a link handy.

b) Lastly, there are some apps out there that will let you create .pkg installers easily from any .app bundle. Here's one I put together - App Packager. I believe Rich Trouton also created one that does something similar.

[AVmcclint]

For me, I've found that putting the .app installer in /tmp/ (or /Users/Shared/) then packaging it up, then deploying it with a post-install (post-copy) script to run the /tmp/installerappname.app/Contents/MacOS/installerappname as root to avoid getting prompted for admin credentials. The user may still need to click Next, Next, Done, but it seems to work for those programs that just refuse to use a standard PKG for installation.

[AVmcclint]

oh wait.. i just re-read the post and the reply from @mm2270. Do you mean you want to deploy the double-clickable .app program straight to the hard drive (like Firefox.app) or are you talking about deploying software that only comes in proprietary installer apps (like SomeProgram installer.app)? I got confused because I know Dropbox comes as an installer, not as a drag-n-drop program.

[rtrouton]

I normally use AutoPkg to handle preparing applications like Dropbox for installation by Casper, as that allows me to hand off the job of building an installer and uploading it to Casper to my robot minions. I have a Dropbox .jss recipe for AutoPkg available via the link below:

https://github.com/autopkg/rtrouton-recipes/blob/master/JSS/Dropbox.jss.recipe

If you're not familiar with AutoPkg and how it can work with Casper, @elliotjordan has a great introduction available here:

https://github.com/homebysix/auto-update-magic

[mm2270]

@AVmcclint its possible your assumption was correct and mine was wrong. I don't deploy Dropbox in our environment so I wasn't aware it came as an .app installer. Is that true? Last time I looked at it it was a regular .app I thought. If that's the case, then your instructions would make more sense. I guess we'll need to wait and see what @monaronyc comes back with.

[monaronyc]

Hi guys, @AVmcclint @mm2270 YES! So as you probably already know, Dropbox comes as a .app installer from a downloaded .DMG. Self Service won't take the dropbox.app. So we have to figure a way of pushing this (deploy) to all our machines without having to touch each machine individually to install. Please say there is!

[stevewood]

@monaronyc have a look at AutoPkg. There are recipes that will download DropBox and create a PKG installer for import into your JSS.

Or, go look at AutoPkgr which will use give you a nice GUI to automate AutoPkg and have the ability to automatically import into the JSS.

[Josh_Smith]

If [ "you want it to be simple, repeatable, automated, and reliable" ]
then
"I second rtrouton's recommendations above for AutoPkg"
else
"use composer"
fi