Adobe CS3 Standard Network Install

[steveo2000]

Does anyone have a clue as to how I can install Adobe Creative Suite 3 over a network silently? Ive spent ages trying to do this and i'm about to give up! I really dont want to have to install this as part of are image but maybe forced to! HELP

Thanks

Steve

[KarlGoddard]

I'm looking into deploying CS4 and it isn't good news I'm afraid... as far as I can see unless you're using SMS or a packaging app it theres now easy way to silently install it. Then again at a 3.1 gig install I'd feel dizzy deploying that through an msi at logon on

Here, it's going on the client image and any odd ball machines that need it will have it installed via psexec

[K.C.Leblanc]

I ran the silent install using PSEXEC. took ages. I'll have a look to see if I did any notes.

[dhicks]

Does anyone have a clue as to how I can install Adobe Creative Suite 3 over a network silently?

I simply followed the CS3 Enterprise Deployment Guide:

http://www.adobe.com/support/deploym...deployment.pdf

Everything worked pretty smoothly. Our machines have a minimum of 512MB of RAM installed and we're running the Adobe installer just after we reimage the machine. We run the installer by having an "install" user with admin rights that runs a logon script. You have to set up an XML installer file as described in the PDF linked to above, but that was a pretty obvious step-by-step kind of thing.

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David Hicks

[KarlGoddard]

I simply followed the CS3 Enterprise Deployment Guide:

http://www.adobe.com/support/deploym...deployment.pdf

Everything worked pretty smoothly. Our machines have a minimum of 512MB of RAM installed and we're running the Adobe installer just after we reimage the machine. We run the installer by having an "install" user with admin rights that runs a logon script. You have to set up an XML installer file as described in the PDF linked to above, but that was a pretty obvious step-by-step kind of thing.

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David Hicks

did you have any issues with the install picking up settings from the xml.override file?

I tried doing the ent deployment but it never picked up any of the suppress settings when we deployed CS4 using that method even though we followed to the letter the steps in the pdf

[dhicks]

did you have any issues with the install picking up settings from the xml.override file? I tried doing the ent deployment but it never picked up any of the suppress settings when we deployed CS4 using that method even though we followed to the letter the steps in the pdf

I don't remember CS3 having any issues picking up any settings that we provided. I don't remember the exact details, and I'm at home at the moment and can't check, but I remember entering the serial number provided by Adobe into the installer's XML file and everything seemed to work just fine. Note that we are using CS3, I have no idea how different CS4 is.

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David Hicks

[K.C.Leblanc]

did you have any issues with the install picking up settings from the xml.override file?

I tried doing the ent deployment but it never picked up any of the suppress settings when we deployed CS4 using that method even though we followed to the letter the steps in the pdf

From memory I think there are several files with the same name, and it only works if you edit the right one. I will have a look tommorow.

[AngryTechnician]

For our CS3 installs we specify the location of the deployment file on the command line to avoid the 'which damn file are you using' problem, e.g.:

setup.exe --mode=Silent --deploymentFile="\\server\pathto\deploymentfile.xml "

Never had a problem with it not picking up the settings using that method.

[Teth]

When we bought CS3 around this time last year I used the enterprise deployment system to install it with an admin installer account with a logon script. Went smoothly enough but took a LONG LONG time. I decided it wasn't realistic long term for rebuilds as it takes as long for the CS3 install as the windows + other other app installs. The adobe installer wont win any prizes for speed regardless of the hardware it is on it would seem.

This year I put it in the base image for the machines before sysprepping them and it has been fine.

The install times are around 25-35 mins from PXE boot to user logon prompt with CS3 in the image. It was 40+min with the installer run as admin. Our periods are 35mins long so I like to keep a re-image time within that.

[Oops_my_bad]

I may be missing something but, how on earth do you create a deploy point for CS3? I can do a silent install with the xml files but only from CD, and this means going through all CDs. There's nothing mentioned in the deployment guide about this - I guess you have to merge the CD's somehow?

By the way, for those of you lucky enough to be using CS4 there is a deployment toolkit Adobe - Adobe Licensing Programs

[dhicks]

I guess you have to merge the CD's somehow?

I just shovled all the files from each install CD into a network share folder, seems to work fine.

Time-wise, the install process is a tad slow - I have our install script copy all the tutorial videos and so on off the resources CDs to local machines, as I figure we might as well get our money's worth from them and they'd be too big to load over the network each time. I think our install for CS3 takes about half an hour.

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David Hicks

[Oops_my_bad]

I just shovled all the files from each install CD into a network share folder, seems to work fine.

Time-wise, the install process is a tad slow - I have our install script copy all the tutorial videos and so on off the resources CDs to local machines, as I figure we might as well get our money's worth from them and they'd be too big to load over the network each time. I think our install for CS3 takes about half an hour.

Thanks.. did you use a particular folder structure?

[dhicks]

did you use a particular folder structure?

The "CreativeSuite" folder on the software installer server share has sub-folders:

deployment
payloads
redist
resources

Which I think is pretty much one CDs worth, although maybe the "payloads" folder is a couple of "payloads" folders combined, I don't remember. We also have a separate folder called "CreativeSuiteExtras" containing:

Adobe Digital Careers
Documentation
Fonts
Goodies
Video Workshop

Which the install script simply copies across to each client machine wholesale with an xcopy command then shoves a couple of shortcuts in the start menu to point to index files and so on.

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David Hicks

[Oops_my_bad]

Thanks DHicks, got it going eventually.

Now.. does anyone know how to get the installer to display a progress bar like you can with most unattended installations? Have tried messing around with --silent=1 setting but havent found anything

[dhicks]

Now.. does anyone know how to get the installer to display a progress bar like you can with most unattended installations?

Nope. Perl script to check on progress of install (by simply checking amount of disk space written so far?) and display a progress bar as appropriate?

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David Hicks