In part 1 Neil laid out the challenges of managing the installation of Pro Tools software so that Macs on a network can install it automatically. 

Part 2 – Tackling the Pro Tools Installer

Prerequisites:

• The MunkiAdmin GUI front end to Munki: (you don’t need it but I prefer working with Munki outside the command line if I can help it)
• A plain text editor to write/edit scripts with, I recommend TextWrangler which is free
• The latest iLok License Manager installer
• A Mac for testing your installation on before you put it into production is recommended.

First, import the Pro Tools Installer DMG as-is into Munki. This gets the application itself in a deployable state.

Now mount the DMG and import any additional installer packages you need into Munki as well. In my example, I have the HD Driver.

Finally, unzip and import the iLok License Manager DMG into Munki.

All these items should import with no trouble. In MunkiAdmin you’ll end up with something like this:

Now we need to edit the pkginfos for Pro Tools and the HD Drivers installer. These define how each piece of software is handled by Munki when clients install them.

For the Pro Tools application we will add a script that runs after the application bundle has been installed on a client. It will copy the ShoeTool from the application bundle to its rightful place and create the correct Launch Daemon property list for it so that Pro Tools doesn’t have to. Thanks to Ricky Chilcott from the Macenterprise mailing list for the original version of this script which I have slightly modified to reflect the name change from DigiShoeTool to ShoeTool in the most current version of Pro Tools.

With MunkiAdmin, edit Pro Tools’ pkginfo (double-click on it in the Packages tab) and copy/paste the script in the Install Scripts tab, under the Post-install script section:

Note for people not using Munki – you will need to create an installer package containing the Pro Tools application with that post-install script instead, if your software management system doesn’t support importing DMG files directly. I won’t go into the details but once you see what I had to do to the AIR Creative Collection in the next chapter, you’ll probably get a rough idea of how to do it.

With the HD Driver, edit the pkginfo to remove a receipt: ‘com.avid.installer.osx.HDFamilySignedDriver’, otherwise Munki will get stuck in a continuous loop of re-installation. You can do this under the Contents tab in the Receipts section by selecting the receipt and clicking the ‘-‘ button:

I don’t know if this happens with the codecs installer, as I don’t need it.

So what have we got now? Pro Tools is inside our Munki repository, ready for your client machines to grab and install. Add them to the required manifests and watch the magic happen, or go to the pub. You’ve earned that pint!

In part 3 we’ll deal with the AIR Creative Collection DMG in a rather creative way.

Update

on 2015-02-11 10:00 by Mike Thornton

We have posted an update following the release of Pro Tools 11.3. If you are deplying 11.3 then please check out the update.