Re: Relocatable packaging, other drives and authentication
Re: Relocatable packaging, other drives and authentication
- Subject: Re: Relocatable packaging, other drives and authentication
- From: Christopher Ryan <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:38:35 -0800
Nathan,
I've been playing around with the InstallerDist2.dmg files to see what
can be done with .dist files.
One of the things we've been playing around in our designs is the
following:
* Default installation "domain" is the local domain, s.t. the main
applications go into /Applications and the fonts go into
/Library/Fonts[/Microsoft]
* Alternate installation "domain" of the user domain, s.t. the main
applications go into ~/Applications and the fonts go into
~/Library/Fonts[/Microsoft] - this is specifically to target users who
have a copy of Office they want to run on a lab machine where they
don't
have admin authority.
* Alternate installation "domain" of the network domain, s.t. the main
applications go into /Network/Applications and the fonts go into
/Network/Library/Fonts[/Microsoft].
* Custom location for the applications, perhaps also the fonts;
probably
still within the idea of the domain, just so that the permissions
can be
set accordingly.
There is currently no "good" support for this "domain" like install
you are requesting. The good news is if you set up your install
correctly and the user chooses to install their package in their home
directory (by selecting their root volume and choosing their home
directory folder) then the Installer will correctly install things as
the user rather then as root:admin and will not request
authentication. Unfortunately this sort of thing is hard for the
user to figure out, so I don't suggest going down this route.
One limitation of the .dist appears to be that you cannot set your
install point to be one volume, but have a choice with a different
custom location point to a different volume. I can imagine that a user
with sufficiently small OS drive space may decide to install the fonts
into /Library/Fonts, but have the main application on an alternative
partition, e.g. /Volumes/Data. Is this the case, or am I missing
something?
Yes, this is possible, although there are some limitations. You can
allow the user to select the location of different choices in a
distribution. However, when you let the user select a new location,
there is no way to select "domains" only folders, so the user could
easily install the fonts in a location you do not want. You are
better off always installing into /Library/Fonts, /Applications/,
etc, and having people that know better move things to other domains
(/Network and/or ~/).
Another apparent limitation of the package system (though I haven't
tried it to make sure), is that in order to support the application's
default installation of into /Applications, I'd need to make the
permissions be root:admin 1775. However, if I'm in the "user" case,
where the user isn't an admin and doesn't plan on installing the
application for all users, I'd not be able to make the permissions be
root:admin even if I wanted to (which I don't, I'd rather it just
be the
user's uid and gid). Furthermore, it seems like it's just a static
setting that a package requires admin authentication or not. Is
this the
case, or am I missing something?
See above, if the user installs in their home directory (this is a
special case) it will not authenticate and install the package as the
user.
Chris
Thanks in advance,
Nathan
----
Nathan Herring
MacBU SDE/Development
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Installer-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Installer-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden