ARD and Package Maker

Just wondering does anyone have any good resources on creating packages for Mac so i can deploy them using ARD, Ive messed around with simple apps but im now looking to deploy istopmotion, and final cut etc that require serial codes, How do i go about adding these to the installer package?

We have used Composer and Packagemaker with the snapshot option. Others have recommended Iceberg, but I never got that to work.

Similar Messages

10.4.7 PPC and "Package Maker"

Just FYI - discovered this AM that none of my Package Maker projects open subsequent to installing 10.4.7 on a G4, and the app will not launch on its own either.
The crash log reports a missing resource from PrivateFrameworks. I performed all the usual precautionary steps prior to and after the update. I'm dowloading the latest dev tools to install in hopes that this will resurrect it.

Just an update, in case anyone else has the same problem: the re-installation (i.e., updating to the latest dev tools) has restored normalcy.

Package Maker, Installer and receipt names

Hi all
I'm a little confused about the receipts that the installer drops into Library/Receipts. For instance, if it installs a file called Fred.abc, then the receipt file is also simply called Fred.pkg.
Now here's my question: what is to prevent a name clash? What if a completely different developer produces a completely independent project which also has a file named Fred dot something? Would the later Fred receipt overwrite the earlier one?
I'm particularly confused because Package Maker actually asks for an organisation string, such as "uk.co.mycompany.myproject", yet never appears to use it! Surely an obvious thing would be for my Fred receipt to be called "uk.co.mycompany.myproject.Fred.pkg" which can be pretty much guaranteed never to clash with any other company's names.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
Thanks in advance
Bob

if you use your system as the template and that folder exist, doesn't Package Maker create that directory on the client if it doesn't exist?
I know I've done this before but perhaps it was with a third party shareware package maker.

Help with Package Maker and System Image Utility

Hi all....
Im trying to use package maker and System Image utility to create a netinstall image. I dont know if im creating the package wrong, or if it has something to do with siu... but when I install the image from the server only the OS installs... not the packages. The packages just get copied to the HD.
Right now im just working on trying to get office to install with the OS...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated...
Thanks...

Just realized that you said the following:
The packages just get copied to the HD.
It sounds like you've made a installer package that's installing the installer packages.
If you simply double click the package you've created and install it, does it do the same thing? If so, then that's what you've done.

ARD and XP Startup integration

Not sure if this has already been covered, but I know I have searched high and low for a way to script startup disk changes from XP back to OS X. I was hoping this might prove beneficial to someone else in my situation. Here is our situation and what we did to finally get around this stumbling block:
-250 iMacs dual-booted with XP and Tiger deployed across university campus labs using Mike's excellent tools.
-Predominately Windows network, with many Windows 2003 Servers, some Linux, and now Xserve with ARD Smile
-XP as the mandatory default OS presented to lab users, with OS X as a manual choice through BootCamp.
We already use Active Directory for automating windows software deployments and maintenance each night through group policies and startup scripts. We also use Deep Freeze Enterprise, which holds this whole process together IMHO. What we ultimately wanted though was to get the OS X clients updating at night as well, and start leveraging some of the amazing capability of Open Directory and MCX. Once deployment was complete, we were faced with the problem of how to reboot these machines into OS X at will...
The solution we found lay in using the excellent open source AutoIt scripting tool. By writing a very small script that handled calling the Startup Disk control panel executable, we could compile that as a AutoIt executable, and then package that together with some XP AutoAdmin registry keys to create a single msi installer that can sit on a network drive somewhere and be called as part of a computer startup script (just like we use for XP maintenance).
Here is the basic workflow for this procedure:
1)Around midnight DeepFreeze kicks off an automated reboot of all our lab computers to thaw them out and get their updates/software installs. By tweaking the scheduling of this maintenance period, I instead schedule a basic reboot at the same time (keeping the systems frozen) with my custom AutoIt package waiting in a startup script in place of the windows update stuff.
2)As XP boots up, it runs the script, the startup panel quickly flashes as the volume is changed, and the system reboots again.
3)OS X boots up (much faster I should note than XP) and is ready for ARD business. Software Updates, package installs, whatever you want to schedule.
One of the first things I did was to make a small shell script that I could use to easily add cron jobs in root's crontab so the clients could reboot back to XP in the morning before the labs open. I know ARD can schedule this, but I feel better knowing each clients has its own means of doing this should network comms break down. Here's a basic script I use:
#!/bin/bash
# Adds necessary cron entries to clients so that systems reboot back into Windows at 6 AM
rm -f crontab.file.$USER
crontab -u $USER -l > crontab.file.$USER
echo "15 12 * * * /sbin/reboot" >> crontab.file.$USER
echo "30 05 * * * /usr/sbin/bless -mount /Volumes/Untitled/ -legacy --setBoot" >> crontab.file.$USER
echo "00 06 * * * /sbin/reboot" >> crontab.file.$USER
crontab -u $USER crontab.file.$USER
4)Once updates are done, and morning starts to dawn, the systems bless their XP volumes and reboot, without having ever been thawed. I know many tasks can be done using launchd and other Apple tools, but I am comfortable with Unix and cron has always worked for me.
It's a fairly hackish setup at best, but from what I have seen so far it's the only alternative. At this point, we are still testing individual labs and just making sure it's stable enough to deploy campus wide. We plan to initially tackle the backlog of software updates, general fixes, and package deployments, however this capability has opened the door to automation and MCX management, including true Active Directory integration.
If anyone is interested in further details, or has some constructive criticism to help make this better, please feel free to contact me.

Quick question- how exactly are you running your autoit script with deepfreeze? We're trying to do something similar with Vista, but are running into trouble, as our script depends on mouse clicks and won't work without a user actually logged in.

ARD and PackageMaker

I am trying to use packagemaker that comes with ARD 3 to make a package that will place an application in the Application folder (which I have had no problem), and place a file in the users home directory. The problem is that I cannot find a way to specify the users home directory. Is this possible?

I've dealt with this myself, and there's no clear path.
What I have done is install the files that I want to go into the particular user's folder into /tmp/someFolderName. Then, as a postflight script, I iterate through the home folders on the computer and copy those files to the appropriate location. When I'm done, I delete the /tmp/someFolderName folder.
if you aren't up to speed on shell scripting, this bit will get you started:
for folderName in `ls /Users`
do
done
There may very well be a better way, but this has worked for me.
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Creating new folders with Package Maker during preinstall actions?

I have figured out MOST of what I need to have a successful install package produced with Package Maker BUT... how do you create an empty folder? My application uses a few folders for archiving and scratch, but unless I add some text file to that path I can't figure out how to create the folder I need. I am only fluent in Applescript so I hope I can use that to create these folders but I will learn enough unix if need be. If it requires any other language to accomplish this task I guess I will have to go another route.
Any ideas?

It isn't part of PackageMaker at all. It is defined in "URL Types" in your application. See the source code to Bwana for a simple example.

Class and package names

I'm novice in Java, but not novice in programming. So, it is not a problem to understand and to write simple samples, but it is still hard to create a good package structure and give good names for classes.
For example now, I started writing simple standalone application, which will be run by cron and will communicate with 2 webservices. I will receive data(reports) from one webservice, and will send this data to another one. From the very beggining, I have a poblem about structure of roject and naming. Is it ok, to make only one class, with name for example ReportApp? Or better create one class for communicating with first service, another - with second, and main class will call methods of this classes? Also package name... I think it is good, when from package you see, that i is service, or xml.util etc. How can I show in package name that it is batch standalone application? Can somebody explain what names for classes and packages he'll use for such task, please.

Descriptive names are nice....
For packages, a standard method is a domain name for your company or organization:
com.widgetsRus.service.
com.widgetsRus.ui.
com.widgetsRus.util.
As for class names, just descripe what the class is for. ReportServer, ReportClient, Report (interface), AbstractReport (implements Report), StatusReport (extends AbstractReport), etc...
As for creating a class for this and that, or separate classes, that's a design issue, but typically, it's easier to maintain things if they are kept in smaller classes with related functionality.

How to prevent downgrading of the app in meta package using package versioning feature of package maker tool?

Hi,
Created an installer i.e, meta package using package maker tool. I want to prevent downgrading of the application or package on the target/installed volume.
Problem is, if there is a newer version of app and when I try to install any older version, then it does not throw any error message to the end user and replaces the existing newer version with the older version of app, which should not happen. But, if I check the package version using version comparison of Package maker tool, that works fine with flat packages i.e, with the .pkg files. So, I need the solution for metapackages(.mpkg) and want to prevent downgrading of app for metapackages. I am not getting any solutions for this. Can someone guide me on this?
Thanks for the help provided.

Hi,
Created an installer i.e, meta package using package maker tool. I want to prevent downgrading of the application or package on the target/installed volume.
Problem is, if there is a newer version of app and when I try to install any older version, then it does not throw any error message to the end user and replaces the existing newer version with the older version of app, which should not happen. But, if I check the package version using version comparison of Package maker tool, that works fine with flat packages i.e, with the .pkg files. So, I need the solution for metapackages(.mpkg) and want to prevent downgrading of app for metapackages. I am not getting any solutions for this. Can someone guide me on this?
Thanks for the help provided.

How to compile and package my EJB application

Hi,
I just ran the sample programs from the Sun J2EE tutorial. Seems to work fine. I used the ant utility to compile all the programs and the J2EE Deployment Wizard to package and deploy everything. Now how do I compile and deploy a sample EJB program that I have written ?
I am using the following platforms:
1: JBuilder 3.0 : IDE (for writing the source code)
2: JDK 1.4.0_01
3: J2SDK EE 1.3.1 (EJB/Appln server)
How do I make ant recognize my program and compile it... i guess the deployment procedure would still be the same.
Can somebody please help me out on this ??
Thanks
prasanna

Hi,
Thanks for your prompt reply. I tried that out.. I have a directory called "customer" under which I have my interfaces,bean implementation class and the J2EE application client.
ANT_HOME is set to : the directory where ant is installed
JAVA_HOME is set to : the directory where JDK is installed
J2EE_HOME is set to : the directory where J2EE server is installed
and PATH : includes the bin directories of JDK, ant and J2SDK EE
These are the paths I had to set when I ran the J2EE tutorial programs. It worked fine.
Now when I say : ant myprogram I get an error saying:
BUILD FAILED
Target "myprogram" does not exist in this project
How do I add my program also to the project so that ant can recognize it ?
Also if there is any other way you can suggest to compile and package my application it would be great...
Thanks
prasanna

Package maker question...

Hi everyone!
I've got a question about doing an install with package maker. Everything is basically setup and running ok...but I noticed if I install a new version on top of an old version it will update the files of the same name but it will not just replace the entire app. For example version 1.0 has files A, B, C, D. And let's say version 2.0 has files A, B, E, F, G. The files that are the same (A, B) will be updated. The new files (F, G) will be added. But the old files that are no longer needed (C, D) will not be removed. So basically my question is how do you get the install of the new to completely overwrite the old?
Thanks in advance,
Reg
Note: I tried to work with the "Locator" feature but no matter what I did I was still not able to achieve the overwrite. Seems there must be something that I'm overlooking???

Hi Niel!
Thanks for the reply! If that's the way to do it is with a script then I know which route to go!
Reg...

Including license check in Package Maker

hi there,
I need to include a license evaluation process in package maker application. That is, if an user enters an valid unlock key or provides a valid license file in the package maker installer, I need to install the specific .pkg file in the user's machine. Else, I need to prompt the user that "Invalid key entered, please enter a valid unlock key or license file". This is same as license validation process in windows environment. But searched a lot about including this process in package maker, couldn't find a way to make it here.
Is there some other installers for Mac could do this process or if package maker can, could you please explain the steps in detail or share any online documentation explaining this process. That will really help me a lot for coming to a conclusion.
many thanks.
- Balaji

hi,
I've created and included sample AppleScripts in "Iceberg installer" in the below events.
1. Preflight
2. Preinstall
3. Preupgrade
4. Postinstall
5. Postupgrade
6. Posflight
But the sample scripts were not even executed single time in any of the above events. Could you please explain when, where and how will be the AppleScripts were executed in an installer package ?
thanks,
-Balaji

Package maker problems

hi there i have a package maker issue that i am sure is either esily resolved because im overlooking something or unexplicaply dificult and i dont even reolise. now i am in no way schooled on how to use this software but common sense has allowed me to build an installer to install files to my desktop no problem. my problem arises when its time to install it on another user or on a diferent computer. because the destination folders i have specified are native to my environent and include my user in the filepath when i then put it on a diferent machine my user no longer exists and ofcourse the files do not end u in the corresponding folders. an example of a filepath i used would have been ' Macintosh HDD/Users/myuser/Desktop ' but the 'myuser' section of course is different on every machine so i gues my question is how do i set the destination path to work on any user on any machine? i tried /Users/User/Desktop and other combinations but like i said i dont realy know what im doing and its verry hard to find info on the subject.
ultimately i want to send 2 files to the applications folder 1 to replace an old version and the other a seperate program
then i want to add some component files to a plugins folder . seemed easy at first then i hit this bump in the road and iv been stuck ever since
many thanks in advance for any help you can offer

james fromcanterbury wrote:
hehe thankyou for your quick response .
i fear it will take me much more than a couple of weeks to master this however much i want it to come quickly.
my next question is rarther embarassing and highlights how little i know . how do i make a sandbox directory do i use patchmaker or do i need to download sandbox or is it part of xcode?
I was just using a generic term. The idea is that you need to setup a development area for installation that mirrors where you are installing. It is just a directory (of directories). It is important to keep it separate from your actual software you are building. Always copy things into the sandbox.
The problem is Package Maker. It is one of Apple's worst programs. One of the things you have to do before installing is change ownership of the sandbox directory to root. That makes dealing with your development directory a royal hassle. It is best to script all parts of a Package Maker installation.
also if you can point me in the direction of any literature on the subject i will be glad to read it!
That would be a great thing to have. Alas, it doesn't exist. There is (may be) documentation inside Package Maker. Some of it may include the command-line tools. There is also a man page for the command-line tools themselves. Neither is actually correct, or, at least, neither was correct the last time I used them. Use them as suggestions rather than documenation. Package Maker is just really buggy and hard to use. No easy answers there. Plus, it changes frequently so my 2-3 year old knowledge of how it used to work probably isn't accurate anymore. It really is trial and error.
In fact, in my last project, I just wrote a bootstrapping installer application. I included a preference pane inside the application bundle of the application. When the application started up, it checked for the preference pane, authenticated if required, and installed exactly what it needed. That was easier than using Package Maker.

Ard and airpoart

Hi a have 2 imacs an old flatpanel running tiger, my new one has intel fp imac with leopard
and airport , i also have a pc with windows xp all computer can excess the internet , my router is a linskys , the cable modem is attached to the old imac , new mac has airport , also has parallels with xp,the pc has wirless adapter also linskys, all have shared folders , the airport will not find all of the computers. The old imac doesnt find any of the computer ,i really want to be able to access all of my computer , and i dnt know what is wrong they all connect , and have shared folder , what am i doing wrong?????????

I am having an issue with ARD and copying to remote
sites.
Using IPSecuritas, I can get to any of our 5 sites
and I'm able to do pretty much everything but copy. I
can not copy to or from any remote machine. I cannot
push ARD upgrades or packages at all. They start at
0% and just sit there. This has been an issue in ARD
2.2 and 3.0.
I can copy just fine to any machines at our main
branch (locally), but cant to any others.
We are using Soekris & Monowall for IPSec. Timbuk2
can transfer files just fine via IPsec, so I was
thinking it was a ARD issue. Anyone have any ideas
on where the issue might be? Thanks...
Here is more on the issue.
From my home, I am not able to do file transfers from behind my firewall. But if I go outside my firewall, I can do the transfers just fine. I opened up ports 3283, 5900 & 22 on both UDP and TCP protocols. That didnt work either..
but at least I now know that it's the firewall that is causing the issue. Would any one have any idea where to look or what might bbe going on? ANY help would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks

Package Maker

I might be on the completely wrong track here but I was wondering if Package Maker can help me do this sort of thing:
You know how when you download software off the web or put a CD/DVD into your computer, when you open the image/CD often the software developer has created like a splash screen. Apple do it with their disks.
I have an example below for Bare Bones' Yojimbo.
Does anybody know how these are made and how they constrain the window to open at a certain size when you double click the dmg or disk?
Please note that I have never used Package Maker.

This has nothing to do with Package Maker.
There are two ways to install software on MacOS X. You can use an installer (such as one created by Package Maker, among others) or you can use a drag-n-drop installation (as in your Yojimbo screenshot).
Apple recommends using a drag-n-drop installation for applications. This makes the application easy to backup, reinstall, and uninstall. If you need to install files in multiple locations, you should follow Microsoft's example (yes, you read that right!) and have the application check for any needed files and re-install them if they are missing. An even better idea is to keep such files in the application bundle and use them from there.
If you are installing system-level modification, such as kernel extensions, you may need to use Package Maker (or something else) to create a real installer. The user will have to enter an admin password to run the installer. You should provide an uninstaller in this case, which you'll have to cobble together yourself somehow.
Another difference is that a Package Maker installer can be localized and can run in the user's native language. Drag-n-drop installations, such as your example, cannot be localized. The application itself can support multiple languages, but there is no way to get the Finder window to display in multiple languages because it just uses images.
So, that is an overview. Now on to your specfic questions. To create a drag-n-drop installer like this, just create a new, empty disk image. Open the image in the Finder. Arrange the items on the disk image window the way you want them to appear, increase the icon size, for example. You'll also want a background image that displays (maybe) some installation text, (probably) and arrow, a logo, and maybe a pretty picture (a muted cog, as in this example). Put your images into a hidden folder on the disk image. Name it ".background" or something to make it hidden. Then, in the Finder, assign that image as the background (use Shift-⌘-G to get to that hidden folder). Finally, include a Unix link to the Applications folder (ln -s /Applications /Volumes/MyAppInstaller/Applications).
The size, position, and layout of the Finder window you have open for that disk image is how the end use will see it. make sure your background is just slightly larger than the dimensions of your window so it displays nicely with no scrollbars. Once you have it the way you want, unmount the image.
I recommend the shareware DropDMG for building these. It can take that disk image you just created, make it read-only, add a fancy icon to the mounted volume (using your application icon as a template), add a localized license agreement when mounting the disk image, and several other things. It is a well-spent $20.

ARD and Package Maker

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