Imaging mac lab with Indesign--licensing issue

January 16, 2009 3:38 PM

I just purchased 24 Indesign licenses, for OS X. I am planning to install Indesign on one mac, then copy the image to the others using Carbon Copy Cloner. Am I going to have to manually type in the license key for each installation of Indesign?

I called Adobe but I got someone reading a script and they weren't that helpful. Our campus mac guy says I get to manually type in those license keys. Our machines are frozen with deep freeze, so it is going to be tedious if that is the case.

posted by mecran01 to computers & internet (8 comments total)

It's more than tedious, it's a fucking nightmare. Welcome to the nightmare world of Adobe Installers 1, 2.

You basically have to sit in front of each machine, yes.
posted by bonaldi at 3:48 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

If you get to set up the deep freeze options, maybe set it to freeze the drive after 3 reboots, instead of the next time the drive is booted, in order to give one reboot for the drive imaging, one reboot to type in the license key, and one spare in case the installer wants you to do a reboot. Forgive me for not knowing where that option is, because I've not used a current version of deep freeze in almost two years. And if that option is not available on mac versions of deep freeze, forgive my ignorance.
posted by deezil at 4:06 PM on January 16

Consider using AppleScript and Apple Remote Desktop to deploy registration scripts to your clients. Presumably you would use a client's MAC address or other identifier to register with a specific SN.

It seems like a lot of work, and sitting in front of the computer is easier, but if you need to do registration of other applications, scripting might be worth it in the long run.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:10 PM on January 16

I know that Adobe offers licenses keyed for multiple machines through their transactional licensing program, but as far as I'm aware, you need to activate it on each machine separately since it needs to check with Adobe for available slots in the license and then register the computer's hardware address against one of those slots.

So, basically, you're SOL if you want to completely automate the machine deployment.

The mac version of deep freeze should allow you to log into a "thawed" session and then refreeze after you've serialized each computer.

Count your blessings that it's only 24 machine. It could be worse.
posted by pmbuko at 6:52 PM on January 16

Wow, thanks for the (depressing) advice. I suppose the other option is to install cracked versions and keep the license keys on file, but something tells me that path would lead to tears. Deep Freeze does have a limited thaw boot mode, so I guess I'll use that. Thanks all!

p.s. I don't know anyone who has ever gotten Apple Remote Desktop to work.
posted by mecran01 at 7:32 PM on January 16

Really? The basics of ARD are a point-and-click slap. Remote installs can get tricky: you'll often have to modify the install scripts, usually removing pre and post-flight scripts, but it's not impossible
posted by bonaldi at 8:02 PM on January 16

I use ARD every single day. It's my most valuable tool in my large tool chest of Mac tech utilities. I don't know why your acquaintances were having problems with it. ARD is a great tool.

Yes, Adobe's installers are the bane of our existence as Mac techs. Unless you have a site license for Adobe and so therefore have a volume license agreement (VLA) copy of Adobe CS3 or Adobe CS4, you're going to have to sit in front of every machine and type in a different serial number for each install. This is how Adobe's product activation works. It sucks.

Even if you (perhaps during your next purchase cycle) obtain a VLA copy of Adobe, you're still going to have issues creating a package installer to roll out to your workstations. Yes you can continue to use CCC to dupe machine A to machine B, etc., but that doesn't address any maintenance and/or updates you'll be doing later on. The only tool I've seen that can successfully create an Adobe CS3 package installer is JAMF Software's Casper suite of tools.

Your best bet is to get ARD working (assuming you have ARD admin software installed on your computer; the client is part of every Mac OS X since 10.4 (maybe even 10.3, my memory fails me)). Then you can at least get multiple ARD sessions going and multitask your way through the simultaneous installations. Make a .dmg of the InDesign installer and put it on a sharepoint somewhere. Mount the image from the network sharepoint and run it from the mounted image. Type up ahead of time (or paste your serials from email?) a txt file with all the serials on it so you can easily copy/paste each serial into the installer section that asks for it. This txt file can live right with the .dmg on the fileserver.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 9:26 PM on January 16

It turns out that we do have a VLA, so everything seems to be working. I was wrong about ARD--they have had problems with Xserve. Thanks!
posted by mecran01 at 11:47 AM on February 16