CS5 Repackaging Guide

These are directions for packaging Adobe CS5 for use with InstaDMG Only.  You cannot use this method if other adobe products are already installed, it will break their licensing.

Acrobat 9 Pro Article was found on Google and modified for this guide.

Make Package using Composer

The first step is to make the install package using Composer or any other packaging add that does Snapshot packages well.  You will want to mount all the DMGs of the software you want to install and have the serial #s ready.  (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash and Acrobat 9 Pro for the purposes of this guide).

In Composer, you will do the follow these steps:

1. Open Composer, authenticate, and select "New and Modified Snapshot."
2. Composer will make a snapshot of all the current files and modified dates.  This will take a few minutes.
3. After it finishes the Snapshot, install all the applications and updates you would like to have in the package.
4. Open both Acrobat 9 Pro, enter the licensing information and tell it to never register. Acrobat will self heal upon first open. Open Distiller as well so it self-heals. Open both of them again just to be sure it doesn't prompt for username/password.
5. Open any of the Adobe products and run the updater from the Help menu. Install all updates.
6. Open the Adobe Help.app in /Applications/Adobe/. When I ran the update, I got an error at the end, but it still updated it properly.
7. Open each and every Adobe app that got install to ensure that none of them need to self heal and to confirm the licensing works correctly.
8. After you are happy that it is all working correctly, click "Build Package" in Composer and it will create another snapshot, compare them and put the files that were changed into the package.
   
9. Take the following files from the current user's Preference folder (/Users/currentuser/Library/Preferences/) and add them to the default user template (/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/)
   • com.adobe.118.registration
   • com.adobe.acrobat.90.sh.plist
   • com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro_x86_9.0.plist
10. Look through the files that are in the package and remove the kruft (unnecessary files). Common examples are samba logs, apple remote desktop related things, etc.
    
11. The install itself, serialization and self-heals are now done. Click Build in Composer and it will do another snapshot and create the package contents.
12. After the second snapshot is done, there is one thing left to do in order to make Acrobat Pro/Distiller work properly. We need to fix the self-heal files so that the apps don't try to self heal when you open them.
    • Open /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroENUDist90SelfHeal.xml in your favorite text editor (TextWrangler works nicely for this).
    • Do a Find and Replace for YES and replace it with NO (MUST be case sensitive).
    • Do a Find and Replace for REQUIRED and change it to NO (Also case sensitive).
    • Do the same thing with /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroENUPro90SelfHeal.xml
13. After the self heal edit is made, you can generate an Apple Package and test it out. Acrobat Pro 9 should open

• Suppressing Self-heal - Acrobat 9 Pro and Distiller dirctions found here:

itmac.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/adobe-acrobat-admin-password-self-heal-problems/

NOTE:  This can only be used if you are packaging this with Composer or something similar.  This will only work in the situation mentioned at the top of this article.

Adobe CS and Acrobat Pro/Reader are unfortunately not the easiest applications to deploy in IT, on either the Mac or PC. A common problem is having general users receive a query for administrator credentials when they open Acrobat after installation. This is caused by Adobe Acrobat running through a “Self Heal” procedure when it’s opened. Many times it’s caused by Acrobat wanting to become the default PDF reader for Safari.

You can minimize the chance of this happening by modifying the Self Heal XML file that is created after installing Acrobat. Please note that this IS NOT RECOMMENDED by Adobe, but seems to be the a common modification amongst IT departments rolling out Acrobat. The file to edit is /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroEFGPro90SelfHeal.xml (for Adobe Acrobat Pro – Reader may have a slightly different name/location. A quick summary of changes made to the XML file:

Change the string of “YES” to “NO“
Change the string of “REQUIRED” to “NO“

Depending on the flavor of Acrobat, you may also see a “FIRST RUN” value as well. This value should also be changed to “NO“. These changes are case sensitive. Also note you will see the “required” key in lower case letters many times in the XML file. These should not be changed. Only the strings previously mentioned should be changed, and they are always capitalized.

Sometimes you will continue to receive the admin username/password request even after modifying the self heal XML file. To remedy this, I’ve found that logging in under a clean admin account, configuring the Adobe Acrobat Pro/Reader preferences as desired, will result in the following .plist files being modified in ~/Library/Preferences.

com.adobe.acrobat.90.sh.plist
com.adobe.acrobat.pdfviewer.plist
com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

If you’re in the image creation process when doing these configurations/testing, you can copy these preference files to the /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences directory, and once your image is complete, new users who login to the system will receive these modified prefrence files by default. You could also deploy these changes in .pkg file, and have a script copy these preferences to the User Template and existing user home directories. The Casper Suite allows you to build specialized packages that can deploy these changes to both the User Template and existing user directories, if needed. Although I haven’t tried, I would guess these preferences could also be managed by MCX/Workgroup Manager if you have your Macs bound to an Open Directory server and are managing them in that manner.

Click here for a .pdf of the Self Heal XML file. Feel free to try it out, modify, and use if needed. This is the self heal file for Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. Those for Reader and version 8 of Acrobat Pro are different, so don’t try and use this one. Instead, compare the changes made on this file and apply to yours as needed. Good luck.

This must also be done for the Distiller Self-heal file.  It should be called AcroENUDist90SelfHeal.xml. It will need to be placed in Application Data.