Software Updates, ihook, & growlnotify

[Kedgar]

Hello,

I'd like to know how you guys are doing software update. I do not yet have any internal sus servers, but would like to begin playing with it. Do any of you use ihook or growlnotify for displaying information to the user when installing software or updates?

I'm particularly interested in ihook, but cannot find a good guide on how to use it other than for radmind.

Thanks,
Ken

[Bukira]

Hi,

I use ihook and growlnotify so anything you wanna know just ask, i dont use SUS, we verify and test all updates prior to deployment and then deploy at logoff via a logout hook and a scoped to a smart group which doesnt have the update.

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
iPhone Developer
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Development Team
Adelphi Building AB28
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[Kedgar]

Hi Chris,

growlnotify seems pretty straight forward, however I'm not entirely sure what to do with ihook. Do you have any sample logout scripts / launch agents you would be willing to share? I'm sure it's simple, however I can't seem to get ihook to run a test script automatically

Thanks,
Ken

[stevewood]

Ken,
On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Kenneth Edgar <ken.edgar at gmail.com> wrote:

When I moved our users to CS4 last December I used iHook to do the
notifications. I would cache the CS4 installer to their machine before
hand, and then setup a policy to run at logout. All the policy did was call
this shell script:

#! /bin/sh

/usr/local/bin/iHook.app/Contents/MacOS/iHook --no-titlebar
--script=/usr/local/JAMF/hooks/install.hook

A little background work was done first, I forgot. I have a package that I
install on everyone's machine that creates two directories: /usr/local/JAMF/hooks and /usr/local/JAMF/images. It also places iHook on
the machine in /usr/local/bin.

So, back to the script, that would invoke the install.hook file, which
contained this information:

#!/bin/sh

echo %BACKGROUND /usr/local/JAMF/images/iHookBack.png
echo %WINDOWSIZE 1024 768

jamf installAllCached

So basically a hook is simply a shell script that is invoked by calling
iHook. Make sense?

The results of this were that I could install CS4 on logout and put up a
notification that the user could not dismiss. I deployed to 100 machines
this way with no issues.

Hope that helps!

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475