Creative Cloud Packager for Mac crashing halfway through build

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

I posted this on the Adobe forums as well but figured it could also be worth posting here in case anyone here knows.

I am trying to build a Creative Cloud 2017 package for deployment to my organisation's Macs during the summer break, however Creative Cloud Packager is crashing halfway through building the package.

I see a dialog saying "Adobe Application Manager has quit unexpectedly".

This is on macOS Sierra 10.12.5 - clean install, with all Apple Software Updates but no other software installed, on a VMware virtual machine hosted on a Mac Mini.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I basically want to include all the apps except Adobe Scout CC (as there's a known problem with including that right now).

Thanks,
Dan Jackson (Lead ITServices Technician)
Long Road Sixth Form College
Cambridge, UK.

17 REPLIES 17

donmontalvo
Esteemed Contributor III

Do you have Creative Cloud app installed on the same Mac? Adobe advises not to use CCP on a Mac that does.

--
https://donmontalvo.com

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

@donmontalvo no, I don't have any other software installed, it's a completely clean installation of Sierra 10.12.5 with all available Apple Software Updates.

SimonLovett
New Contributor III

Hi Dan,

I had similar experience running Creative Cloud packager on Sierra in a VM as well. I was short of time to fully investigate it, so in the end I just partitioned some space on my VM host, (which is only a middle-aged i5 iMac after all), put a fresh second OS instance onto it and ran it from there. It worked fine on real metal.

If it had happened at a time when I could have looked into it more thoroughly, my first port of call would have been to google where creative cloud packager keeps it's log files, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it had run out of memory or hit a time-out or something due to the guest OS running too slowly.

I have also seen some pretty weird effects in Adobe products where I have turned previous monolythic "gold masters" into VM's to test backward compatibility - the Adobe installer checks the hardware requirements on install, but doesn't (or hasn't in the past) appeared to check those requirements at run time.

Simon.

kerouak
Valued Contributor

OH DEAR!!!

I would download the CC Packager app again..
I've had to do this a number of times..

:-(

kerouak
Valued Contributor

LOLO.
Funnily enough, I tried it using High Sierra Beta and it's packaged fine....

erowan
New Contributor III

I successfully built a complete CC 2017 package yesterday on a non-VM clean install of 10.11.6 El Capitan: Creative Cloud for Education device licenses, English (North America) language, included Scout and excluded archived versions.

What's the known issue with Scout CC? I'd only heard of the expired certificate problem with packages built before March 9:

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/packager/creative-cloud-package-installation-failed-error-mes...

SimonLovett
New Contributor III

Slide 95 (!) on here shows the location of the CCP log files and lots of other useful information :)

http://macadmins.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24696/2016/06/psumac2016-62-The-ABCs-of-CCP.pdf

SimonLovett
New Contributor III

..and another potentially useful link - were you trying to run the installer from a VMWare Fusion shared folder?

https://swytechnotes.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/dont-test-installers-from-a-vmware-fusion-shared-folder/

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

@SimonCU that was the next thing I was going to try, enabling all the "reflectHost" configuration options on the VM so that the underlying Mac hardware's SMBIOS and whatnot gets passed through.

@kerouak surely if the app download itself was corrupted that would have manifested errors before this point? e.g. the digital signature would've been broken?

@erowan that's the one, are you saying that's fixed now?

@SimonCU that's handy, I will check the log files tomorrow.

Also re the shared folder, it's not Fusion I've got, it's ESXi. As there's no free version of Fusion.

SimonLovett
New Contributor III

@DanJ_LRSFC, I am familiar with ESXi, or an older version of it, and I think it creates a fake VM serial number for the hardware in a similar way?

I wonder if the Adobe installer is recognising a virtual environment given that we have both hit errors trying to do this. I wonder if others have had the same problem.

I am guessing that creative packager is mainly used in large environments where spare hardware is generally to hand - it is certainly going to be quicker to build with a bare metal OS - that is what I normally do, which is why when it errored I didn't bother enquiring further, I just reverted back to something I knew I could rely on.

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

@SimonCU I've got plenty of spare PC hardware to hand but not spare Macs.

Anyway, I've now added the following to the VM's advanced configuration options:

board-id.reflectHost = "TRUE"
hw.model.reflectHost = "TRUE"
serialNumber.reflectHost = "TRUE"
smbios.reflectHost = "TRUE"

And the VM is now showing the correct serial number and model name of the host hardware, so I'll try the package build again.

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

So the nature of the error has changed, it's now crashing on Currently Building (81%) - is that an issue anyone else has had?

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@DanJ_LRSFC I create CCP pkgs in a VM too.. however i'm using the AutoPkg ccp-recipes.

One thing to try is [disabling App Nap[(https://www.lifewire.com/control-how-mac-applications-use-app-nap-2260788)

Also, keep CCP as the frontmost app (i.e. leave it running).

Lastly remove any AV software etc.

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

@bentoms I'm not familiar with AutoPkg, what is it? If it lets me bypass using Adobe's terrible CCP tool I'm definitely interested.

When I looked at the "Get Info" for the actual CCP app there was no "App Nap" button, but I've done the defaults write command to disable it systemwide.

CCP was the frontmost app. No antivirus software is installed on this VM.

I'll try again now I've disabled the App Nap thing.

EDIT: the VM just tried to install a Thunderbolt 1.2 update which hosed it. Guess I get to start again from the baseline snapshot!

EDIT 2: When googling ccp-recipes I came across this gem:

"If you're building packages on a headless Mac, CCP will stall unless a Screen Sharing / ARD observe session is active."

So that will very likely be why it's causing trouble. I shall try remoting into it from my desk Mac, which does not get switched off overnight.

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

Unfortunately the idea of leaving a Screen Sharing session connected to the VM did not prevent CCP from crashing.

@bentoms I had a look at AutoPkg and the ccp-recipes, but it seemed to be saying you had to have already been able to successfully build a package using the CCP GUI before you could use it? And as I can't, that would make it a non-starter for me.

DanJ_LRSFC
Contributor III

It does indeed work if I create the package on a physical Mac rather than a virtual one, is it likely to be a problem that the package was not created on the OS version it is going to be installed on? As I can't put Sierra on my regular desk Mac Mini just yet.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@DanJ_LRSFC nope.. the OS version of the Mac building the CCP packages shouldn't matter.