Adobe CC local server and RUM

If you have any significant installation of Adobe Creative Cloud products in your environment, it may makes sense for you to run a local Adobe update server which is basically a copy of all Adobe CC updates hosted on your own machine and server with the web server of your choice.

There are two major benefits to running this server.  First, you're speeding up the update process on your workstations and saving bandwidth to the Internet.  Second, having a local server allows you to control what updates are available to your machines. I run three servers so that I can have DEV, TESTING, and PRODUCTION.

You can also invoke Adobe's command line tool called Remote Update Manager (RUM) to look for updates and apply them. 

This guide will go over setting up your Adobe server and running RUM on your workstations.  I'll reference Apple Mac computers, but RUM works on Mac and Windows computers.  Sadly, the tool to sync your local Adobe Update repository with Adobe's doesn't work under Linux; it's Mac or Windows only. 

Setting Up a Server
All you really need is a Mac or Windows computer with a web server on it. You may need to modify the mime types when running under IIS, but that's not really too hard.  Then run the sync tool when you're ready.

Setting up the Webserver
You Mac has a web server built in.  It called Apache and is the server used by the majority of websites in the world.  To start it up, open Terminal and type.
     sudo apachectl start
You can verify it is working by opening a web browser and visiting http://localhost/   You should see "It Works!" which is a basic web page that comes with Apache.  Those web pages are kept in /Library/WebServer/Documents folder.  Open that path and create a folder in there called AdobeUpdates (no spaces).

Setting up AUSST
Now you need Adobe's AUSST tool (Adobe Update Server Setup Tool).  On your Mac, assuming you've installed Adobe Creative Cloud software (such as Photoshop or Illustrator), you can find it in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/CCP/utilities/AUSST    If you have Adobe Creative Suite installed on a different computer, you can copy the AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool to your webserver now. 

Sync Updates with Adobe
Once you have a web server running and have the AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool, you can run it to get the data from Adobe.  It'll download anywhere from 50 to 100 GB of data so be prepared!  Run the command line tool and pass it the parameters 'fresh' and the path to store the updates. 

<AUSST> <--fresh> </path/to/updates>

Example:
sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/CCP/utilities/AUSST/AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool --fresh /Library/WebServer/Documents/AdobeUpdates

That will start updates downloading. In the future to get changes from Adobe, you just need to run AUSST with the --incremental flag. --fresh is only for the first time you run it.

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/CCP/utilities/AUSST/AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool --incremental /Library/WebServer/Documents/AdobeUpdates

Testing your server
Now is a good time to make sure everything works.  From a different computer, open a web browser and make sure you can connect to your webserver.  Enter the computer name or IP address into that web browser and you should see the 'It Works' page you saw in the beginning.

You should also be able to type in
     http://yourserver.com/AdobeUpdates/webfeed/oobe/aam20/mac/updaterfeed.xml
You should either see the file which looks like XML text, or get a parsing message about XML.  As long as you don't get file not found or can't connect to server. 

Configuring Clients
The Adobe CC programs on your company's workstation need to know about your server and be directed to get updates from there instead of directly from Adobe. To do that, they need a configuration file.  You can either create that manually and deploy them (one Mac and one Windows), or have the AUSST tool create it for you.

To have AUSST create it for you, enter a command like the following
<AUSST> --genclientconf=<path to where to save configs> --root=<path to updates> --url=<Server URL>

If you've been following along at home, your command should look like

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/OOBE/PDApp/CCP/utilities/AUSST/AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool 
    --genclientconf=/Library/WebServer/Documents/AdobeUpdates/configs   
    --root=/Library/WebServer/Documents/AdobeUpdates 
    --url=http://servername/AdobeUpdates

This should be on one line, but formatting limits it here.

So now in the path specified in the genclientconf line, you'll have a mac folder and win folder.  Each has a file called AdobeUpdater.Overrides.  That file, when in the correct location on a client machine, instructs Adobe applications to check your server for updates instead of going out to Adobe's servers.  Copy that file to:
   In Mac OS X:
   /Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdater/1.0/AdobeUpdater.Overrides
   In Windows XP:
   \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0\AdobeUpdater.Overrides
   In Windows 7/Vista:
   \ProgramData\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0\AdobeUpdater.Overrides
Your favorite management tool comes in handy here.

Testing it all out

If you've gotten this far, it's time to give it a try.  Open your favorite Adobe application, then from the Help menu, choose Check for Updates.  It doesn't matter if any are available or not - you can still see if it worked by going back to your server.  Open /Applications/Utilities/Console.   On the left, look under /var/log for apache2.  If you expand that disclosure triangle, you'll see access_log.  Select that and you should see an entry from the machine you just checked from.  Do it again, and watch the log file.  If an update is available, you'll see lots of lines as updates are downloaded.

RemoteUpdateManager (RUM)
If you remotely manage your machines with a tool such as JAMF Casper, you can create a policy to update applications using the RemoteUpdateManager (RUM).  Create a policy in your JSS with a 'Files and Processes' section Execute Command set to "/usr/local/bin/RemoteUpdateManager --action=install"    If any Adobe applications are currently open, the install will fail and the user will not be interrupted. 



Ongoing Work
Now that you have your own server, you'll need to update it occasionally.  Use the --incremental line from above to re-sync with Adobe and make updates available to your clients.

Next Time
In the next article of this series,  we'll incorporate a TEST server so that updates can be tested before being released to your computers.