Deployment Issues via SSH

[aaronmjones]

We use Jamf Pro for our Mac management, and had success with the Adobe packages configured and downloaded from the Adobe Admin Console until about about a month or two ago.  At that point, the installs started to intermitantly fail.  I originally thought the problem was machine based until it failed on 2-3 fresh machines. I've spent a fair amount of time troubleshooting on this, and had a breakthrough today... though sadly not a solution.

A few more consistent details:

• All packages are managed, and self-service installation isn't allowed.
• Issue happens on Intel and Apple Silicon, with the package(s) intended for their architecture.
• Issue happens on Mojave and Big Sur.  I haven't tested Catalina.
• Issue happens on machines with existing Adobe apps, or no Adobe apps.
• Issue happens with deployment via a Jamf Pro policy (not Adobe's problem there)
• Issue also happens with deployment via SSH as root (via sudo -i) with the command installer -pkg <pkg> -target /
• Issue DOES NOT happen if you use the GUI to install with an admin user.
• Issue DOES NOT happen if you log in via SSH as an admin user and use the command sudo installer -pkg <pkg> -target /
• The consistent fatal error in PDApp.log is: The Bootstrapper Process return code is (6).Stopping the installation process.

It seems to be some sort of bug if an installation via sudo works, but fails if you actually are root.  I'd be happy to provide more logs, however keep in mind that this is not localized to a single machine.

[___Dom___ · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I was able to reproduce the issue by connecting to a Mac via ssh (when it was at the login screen) and attempting the installation via a shell initiated with "sudo su - root". 

The issue appears to be that there is no keychain accessible from the root account. Our engineering team are investigating this, but at present this appears to not have a workaround (other than using a different deployment mechanism which avoids the root account)

Sincerely,

Dominic

[aaronmjones]

This situation seems to be resolved in new packages created in the Adobe Admin Console after May 19th.  Packages can once again be installed from a `root` login, which in turn means they can be installed by an MDM solution.