On 7/20/06 15:37, "Don Montalvo" <email@hidden> wrote:
I guess that I will have to take a look at PackageMaker or
Iceberg,
which I have used before. When it's Office then it's possible
to just
package the whole thing and distribute it again, but more
complex
application suites like Adobe CS2 scatter files all over the
harddrive and it also takes up to many GB's to distribute the
whole
suite everytime there's an update.
CS 2 has a command line install routine that is the bomb. I
used it
and it
took less than 20 minutes to fully install CS2 on three machines
combined.
It's available from the downloads page for CS, and they have a
windows
version too.
Is this the "Silent Install Script" on the Adobe downloads
page your
are talking about?
Yup
is there an advantage of installing using the "silent install script"
rather than packaging up and pushing via ard? if your company site
licenses all adobe products, you can include the serial text file in
the push (or sed/awk entries as required).
If you do the initial install, it will take between 45 and 75
minutes from
CD.
three cds full.
You also have to deal with Adobe's lovely puke-tastic scattering of
files on
your system.
If you do the silent install, you'll have the CDs imaged on the
network,
(always a good idea), and per machine will take ~20 minutes. If you
run it
as a Unix command task, you can do multiple machines at once, the file
installation is handled for you, and you can even have it log
everything it
does to file so you can tell if anything went wrong. If something
does go
wrong, (usually having Version Cue running is the culprit), you can
fix and
re-run without problem. I had one machine that was being a PITA,
but I just
re-ran the script.
Note that this doesn't require Apple Remote Desktop, but Apple Remote
Desktop makes it easier to do en masse. If you need to add another
machine
later on, you can do it via SSH sans Apple Remote Desktop, via
dialup if
necessary, since all the data transfer takes place between the
server and
the destination client.
Also, and this is just my impression, so it has no real empirical
value, the
silent install is faster than Apple Remote Desktop and an installer
package
is going to be, as there are fewer steps. All the data transfer is
part of
the install with the silent install, whereas with Apple Remote
Desktop, you
have the separate copy the package, then run the install step.
If you really wanted to be slick, since this is all just shell, you
could
set it up to do the updates via Apple Remote Desktop, (those are
real hefty,
at least initially). Build an AppleScript for Apple Remote Desktop
that runs
the "Send Unix Command" for the initial install of CS 2, and queue
up the
installer package for the updates. That way, you take advantage of
the speed
of the Silent Install, (MAD props to Adobe for that), and you take
advantage
of Apple Remote Desktop and the Apple Installer featureset to
automate and
speed up the update process.
Both tools work, I just like using the one best suited for the job,
and for
the initial install, that Silent Install is damned fast.
--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
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