Adobe Reader DC in InTune

Udgivet den 1. april 2020 af Froberg

This is a less than ideal situation. Unfortunately with Reader you’re quite limited in what you can do, without doing exhaustive workarounds. The process was somewhat simple in SCCM, where I would utilize the original .MUI install from 2015 as a pre-requisite for the latest .msp file available. This ensured that I always had the latest Adobe Reader installation deployed in my environment.

Any such dreams have been squashed by InTune and the inherent limitations therein, so the only viable solution I have found is:

  • Sign up for Adobe Distribution so you get the FTP download links. According to the EULA I am not allowed to link to them.
  • Download the 2015 setup.exe and extract it using winrar, 7zip or similar.
  • Run Adobe Customization Wizard and create a transform file.
  • Download the 2015 .msi version of the software in your desired language.
  • Use a tool like InStedIT to embed the transform file in to the .msi file.
  • Deploy the altered .msi via InTune using /qn installation parameters.

This does work, you just have to recognize that Adobe Reader will be installed in a very old version and you’re relying on third party tools or the auto-updater to run and update the software in the background.

It really isn’t how I would prefer to go about it, but no other solution has presented itself that seems workable in the long term or that doesn’t require inordinate amounts of work to maintain. Thankfully my endpoint solution of choice does help keep software up-to-date, so it matters less in my case. Just be aware.

If anyone has found a more elegant solution to this, please do share.

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Manually updating Nextcloud docker

Udgivet den 15. marts 2020 af Froberg

I’m running a nextcloud instance in a docker container witch nginx proxy manager handling the SSL for the site. All running on UnRaid.

Unfortunately this has caused some issues, chief among them being able to actually update the nextcloud installation. I’ve, as yet, been unable to find a permanent solution that will prevent timeouts during upgrades, so instead I’ve opted for updating via the terminal. It’s extremely straight forward, so I’ll lay out the steps and hopefully help someone who is struggling with it, as keeping your NextCloud up-to-date when it’s internet facing is quite important.

Manual upgrade procedure:
Open the docker terminal via the UnRaid GUI.
Turn on maintenance mode:
cd /config/www/nextcloud/
sudo -u abc php occ maintenance:mode --on
This will ensure that your Nextcloud instance is in maintenance mode. It’s got friendly console output, so if it works you’ll know.
Now, we’ll want to ensure we have a backup of our nextcloud install, just in case anything goes awry, so we’ll do that real quick:
cd /config/www/
sudo -u abc mv nextcloud nextcloud-backup
This essentially renames your nextcloud directory. You can use ls to verify that it’s renamed.
Now we’re going to grab the NextCloud update, and it’s important to note that you can only update one major version at a time. If you’re far behind in the update schedule you will need to update one version at a time.
We’ll go to https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/ and grab the link for our needed version, in my case – since I keep a tidy house, I’ll be using https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.tar.bz2 as that’ll always be the latest version. You can find your version info in the admin panel, if you’re in doubt.
Now we need to grab and extract the data:
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.tar.bz2
and to extract:
sudo -u abc tar -xvf latest.tar.bz2
It can take a while to unpack, but once it’s done we need to grab our config file from our backup and place it in to the newly created nextcloud folder, like so:
sudo -u abc cp nextcloud-backup/config/config.php nextcloud/config/config.php
Now restart the docker container through the UnRaid Web GUI.
Once that’s done, we’re ready to start the upgrade proper:
cd /config/www/nextcloud/
sudo -u abc php occ upgrade

This will take a while. Once finished, stop maintenance mode:
sudo -u abc php occ maintenance:mode --off
And restart your docker container.

Now, we wait for NextCloud to finish starting up, and verify that all is as it should be. Usually I find there’ll be some commands that you need to run manually post-upgrade, they’ll pop up as notifications in the admin panel in NextCloud, so do be sure to check that they are run as well.
Lastly we have to do cleanup, as no-one likes a cluttered system, right?
cd /config/www/
rm -R nextcloud-backup will take care of your backup directory.
rm latest.tar.bz2 will take care of the downloaded tarball.

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Work In Progress.

Udgivet den 15. juli 2019 af Froberg

Well new year, new website, new domain (as I finally got tired of a .me domain..) – and as luck would have it, none of my legacy blog-posts to carry over. Some of that’s a real shame that it got lost, but I figure the MediaSmart Homeserver and most of my other stuff is no longer really going to be of interest to anyone, and I won’t be working with SCCM any more, so I won’t really have cause to re-create that.

So then: A fresh slate!

I think I’ll stick to writing technical stuff though, so let’s get started…

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