A Work In Progress

Adobe Update Fun Redux

Dave — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:18:06 +0000

As promised in the last post, I noticed new updates available and wanted to see if I can make this process easier. Based on the number of hits I get to this topic, I guess Adobe hasn’t fixed this yet, or hasn’t communicated well.

So, as per my previous post, the Adobe Update Manager is actually PDapp.app located on my mac (standard install) at

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/core/PDApp.app.

You might think you can run sudo open PDApp.app. To quote from the excellent forum post I referenced in my previous article

Cocoa Applications
To run applications as root, we use sudo. However combining open and sudo in this form:
sudo open /path/to/some.app
results in sudo running open as root, but open still opens the application as the original user!!!

Therefore, the longer method of specifying the full path name for Cocoa applications (not just to the .app package, but to the actual executable):
sudo “/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

So putting this all together the following works wonderfully, running the Adobe Update directly as root and installing the updates without the horrible “Another instance of deployment is already running“ error.

sudo “/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/core/PDApp.app/Contents/MacOS/PDapp”

That’s too much to type. So add the following to your .profile in your home directory. (Note the required enclosing single quotes).

alias au=’sudo “/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/core/PDApp.app/Contents/MacOS/PDapp”‘

Now whenever you see that there are Adobe updates available, open a Terminal window, type au and enter your root password if/when prompted.

Adobe Application Manager (Updater) fun

Dave — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:19:58 +0000

Being relatively new to Adobe CS5 I’ve been struggling (in my spare time) trying to get the updates after my initial install. (I’m running a MacBookPro OSX 10.6.5.)

The symptom: The updater downloads all the updates and then fails with a message “Another instance of deployment is already running“

The (apparent) cause: When the updater fires up it does so under the user account. When one clicks the apply updates button, which requires root privileges, one is asked for admin credentials and then the updater starts. This is all very familiar. However if you are watching the activity monitor you can see the original Adobe Application Manager running as user and after you give the updater credentials you can see a SECOND Adobe Application Manager process forked under root. My suspicion is that the first one puts out some lock that the second one (or its eventual invocation of PDapp) detects and fails.

The workaround: You need to start the Adobe Application Manager / PDApp as root, and not rely on it to escalate privileges by forking a new process. Easier said than done as you won’t find this app in your application folder to startup. The first thing I tried which worked was to start one of the adobe products (Photoshop) up as root from the terminal. A nice post on how to do this is here.

http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/29520-how-launch-application-terminal.html

With Photoshop running as root, I went to the help | Updates menu which fires up the Application manager. I then quit Photoshop, and told the Application manager to process the updates. Ta-da. Done.

Other comments: The actually location of the PDapp (on a default CS5 install) is at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/core/PDApp.app. It is usually invoked with a few command line switches (knowledge gleaned by inspecting the process after it was launched as I was trying to find where this beast lived). Next time there are updates available I’ll play with trying just to run that directly as root.

There may be much more elegant / standard / knowledgeable ways to deal with this, but frankly I spent a month (on/off) trying to find this solution on the web and did not find much other than folks complaining about the same problem. For people running Windows there was a post at http://forums.adobe.com/thread/649118 which seemed to help some folk. (it talks about the Adobe Bridge update, but its all the same symptom. See post 31 in this stream). So hopefully this blog entry will save some other hapless soul some time.

2010 Summer Arts Festival Featured Artists | Interlochen Concerts & Events

Dave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 02:39:55 +0000

2010 Summer Arts Festival Featured Artists | Interlochen Concerts & Events.

Interlochen (my new employer) posted their artists for this years Summer Arts Festival. Check out what I’m going to get to see up close and personal (and you could too!).

Joomla (and more)

Dave — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:45:43 +0000

Just a quick post about a hosting provider that was recommended to me, and that I am moving a couple of my “friends and family” sites to. They have a “simple as it gets” install (Fantastico Deluxe) for Joomla, WordPress, Drupal,…… a relatively big list actually. And the big deal (that the email said I could re-tweet/blog etc.) is a year of hosting for 10 bucks.

I like those kind of deals, especially when I need a place to play with things. I don’t have a lot of experience with this provider yet, but $10 is not a huge risk IMHO.

http://www.siteground.com/christmas.htm

Pandora Faithful

Dave — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:16:52 +0000

Good time listening to Tim Westergren in Birmingham MI last night. He’s an engaging speaker, and held a substantial audience for over an hour. If you’re wondering what Pandora is, head over to the Pandora blog. Check out the October 18th entry where Tim explains it all in a video.

Pandora meetup Birmingham MI

Dave — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:27:59 +0000

Hey there blog readers (both of you). Just got an email from Pandora about a meet-up in Birmingham MI. Probably all you Pandora listeners got the same email, but if not, I’m posting the content here in case you are interested, as I don’t know that its being promoted anywhere else on the web. No RSVP required. I plan on attending!

Hi, Tim here.

Hope this email finds you well, and enjoying the arrival of a crisp Michigan fall.

I’m writing to invite you to Birmingham for a Pandora town hall on Monday evening, October 19th at 7pm. Really looking forward to finally holding our first Detroit-area get together! We have listeners all over the Detroit Metro area and surrounding suburbs – it was really hard to pick a spot. Sorry in advance for those for whom this is out of the way – I hope you’ll rally.

It’ll be a very informal gathering. I’ll share some Pandora history, some background on the Music Genome Project, the process of creating a company, and our visions for the future (including some really cool stuff with car companies for you auto buffs). Things are moving so fast there’s lots to talk about. I’ll happily answer any burning questions you have, listen to suggestions, critiques… you name it.

Should be a fun evening. And I’ll have some special Pandora swag too! Feel free to bring as many guests as you like. The more the merrier. No need to RSVP.
Full details below:

What: Pandora Listener Meetup
Where: Palladium 12 Theater, 2nd level, 250 North Old Woodward Avenue, Birmingham, MI
When: Monday, October 19, 7PM
Directions: http://www.uptownpalladium12.com/directions_and_parking.htm

See you soon.

– Tim (Founder)

Dashing Dashboard

Dave — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:12:51 +0000

I attended the Detroit Java User Group meeting Wednesday night featuring James Ward evangelizing on Flex as he is known to do. One of the cool things I liked was the “Who’s using Tour de Flex Now?” dashboard. It is an example of push technology using Live Cycle Data Services from Adobe. It shows the general location of folks who are looking at any sample in the Tour de Flex sample viewer application. Fun. Made me start to think…does my company have any user web interactions that might be fun to map this way? Perhaps projected in our lobby….. nah, probably not.

Flex Certification Help

Dave — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:39:34 +0000

I ran across this the other day via LinkedIn via someones blog entry (which I can’t locate now, or I’d give credit). Anyway, I’ve found certification (Sun Java) useful, not from having the credential, but from the studying I needed to do to attain it. So I was happy to find this Flex/Air Certification Mock Exam called Attest for the stunning price of FREE (for personal non-commercial use). Many thanks to Dave Flatley at PXL Designs, LLC and Holly Schinsky at Rich Desktop Solutions, Inc for creating and sharing!

Spatially for you

Dave — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:35:47 +0000

Whilst on vacation (a much needed sun-sprint to escape stress and Michigan weather) I received an email that actually made me want to come home. (ok, maybe only a little). It was the long awaited invitation to the private beta of Spatial Key, an incredibly cool rapid data visualization tool powered by Flex and written by the folks at Universal Mind. Imagine uploading a csv data set, and in a few clicks seeing a heat map plot of your data. Imagine uploading multiple data sets and having a tool recognize the geo-temporal data (don’t get to use that phrase every day) automatically and allow you to overlay the different sets on the same map, or see time line differentials across multiple maps. Now imagine being able to setup multiple types of dashboard widgets along with your map (at about 1-click per widget in the effort department). And then imagine a facility for managing this new “report”, the data sets, the users and permissions for access….

Having helped my friend Jim on a prototype of a mapping tool far more primitive, I will say, (and Jim would agree), a huge part of the work is in the data setup. This tool fills a niche that I suspect many don’t even yet see (despite having “looked”).

Its only a beta, but functioned pretty well with my first test data sets. Well enough to get the creative juices flowing. You can request entry into the beta from their website at www.spatialkey.com. The beta accounts are capped at 10k rows per data set, but its enough to give you some great ideas of the data analysis that could be possible. Check it out.

Step away from the keyboard

Dave — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:23:15 +0000

A long day/week and here I am at a keyboard again…albeit this time in the relative comfort of home. Before toddling off to interact with other actual live beings who inhabit this space, had to check the email, which leads to surfing and checking LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, which leads to “ohh, that’s cool”, which has now led to a blog post. I see that Adobe has renamed their RIA Buzz news letter to News Flash. Some good articles on “RIA’s that Rock” (check out FriendDeck) and a good overview article on Flex Frameworks.. Once on the Adobe sites I thought to check for Flex User groups in my area and was happy to have found the recently started Detroit Area Adobe Users Group on Adobe Groups. You need a (free) Adobe ID to join this public group, yet another user group hosted so graciously by ePrize (some old friends there). Anyway, its nearby and seems to have a good following…so I see another set of random weeknights that I’ll be home late in my future.