I've written quite a few Mac installers, distributed to users who ran them
as administrators, but now I'm trying to customize an MS Office 2011
installer in a more managed environment where users may not have admin
permissions.
My goal is to push out the installer with ARD or Casper and have it warn
users to quit any Word applications, run a custom install and clean up
Dock icons if possible. The installer is moved to /private/tmp/, along
with a "ChoiceChanges.xml" file, and the postflight script runs
/usr/bin/installer on the package, applying the xml file to unselect
Entourage and other stuff. That much works fine, but I'm having two other
problems with the postflight (/bin/sh) script.
The script has a line to check whether the Finder is running, and if so
to clean up Office Dock icons. Here's the code:
# run ps, see if Finder is running and if it is, grab the UID of
the process owner for setting permissions later.
FinderUID=`/bin/ps -axfc | /usr/bin/grep Finder | /usr/bin/sed
's/^ *//' | cut -d -f1`
# DEBUGGING...
LINE_FinderUID=/bin/ps -axfc | /usr/bin/grep Finder
/bin/echo "DEBUG THIS ps -axfc output: $LINE_FinderUID" >>
/var/log/Office2011Install.log
#
# remove dock items if
if [ $FinderUID ]; then
# log the result
/bin/echo "Finder is RUNNING with UID= $FinderUID" >>
/var/log/Office2011Install.log
This works fine if the logged-in user runs the installer themselves on the
target machine, OR when I push the installer out with Casper or ARD to an
OS 10.6.8 machine, but when I push it to a Leopard machine it does not
work, and the debugging line returns nothing. (If I ssh in from another
machine and sudo to root, I get the correct UID, and, again, the log entry
always is correct on Snow Leopard test machines).
Any ideas on what might be happening on Leopard machines? What might have
changed in Snow Leopard or how to fix?
My second question is about user interaction. I've written an
AppleScript to prompt the user to close any open Windows applications
before the installer forces their window to close with without warning
(potentially losing work). The script works if the user launches the
installer themselves, but I can't find a way to launch it interactively,
even if I launch it as the current user:
/usr/bin/sudo -u $FinderUsername /usr/bin/open
/private/tmp/QuitOfficeProcesses_warning.app
Is there no way to run display dialog in an AppleScript in an postflight
script that I push it out with Casper or ARD? (I tried to use osascript:
osascript -e 'display dialog "Warning!" '
...but that gives me an execution error "no user interaction allowed".
If not, I can figure out how to detect open Office applications with a
shell script, but how do I communicate to the user that they need to quit?
Do I need to use iHook?
thanks for any help,
Rick Horlick
