JSS Recipes

A collection of AutoPkg recipes that helps Casper Suite administrators use JSSImporter to automate their software testing workflow.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Standard workflow for JSS recipes
• Requirements and configuration
  • JSSImporter
  • Parent recipes
  • App Store apps
  • Testing group
• Style guide
  • Filename
  • Product Subfolder
  • Parent recipe
  • Identifier
  • Processing
  • Policy Template
  • Extension Attributes
  • Scripts
  • Linting
• Getting help

Introduction

This repository of recipes strives to represent a collective expression of best-practices in automated software patch management for administrators of the Casper Suite.

Let us unpack that statement!

First and foremost, the contributors of this repository aim to agree upon a standard software testing workflow that mirrors community-supported standards in use by other deployment frameworks. While it is possible to upload and deploy software in many ways using JSSImporter, the workflow reflected in these recipes will be safe, consistent, and sane.

Next, we aim to promote this standard workflow by peer-reviewing all recipes in this repository. This process will ensure that the recipes can be relied upon to faithfully realize the standard workflow, and admins will be able to extend and override these recipes with predictable and consistent results.

We strive to include the most common apps expected to be part of the AutoPkg domain, including but not limited to those of the "standard" Recipes repo.

Finally, we want to make the style of JSS recipes consistent, as set forth below in the Style guide.

Standard workflow for JSS recipes

Software packages are uploaded to distribution points and made available through a Self Service policy to members of the Testing group who do not already have the latest version of the software.

The following pieces work together to accomplish this workflow:

• JSS recipes use PKG recipes as parents. This ensures that a standard Apple package (pkg) file can be uploaded to the distribution points.
  • The resulting package file's name includes the software's name and version number (e.g. Firefox-38.0.5.pkg).
  • The package file's metadata includes any OS version restrictions that govern that product's installation.
• The JSS recipe specifies the category for the package file itself, which is chosen from among a limited set of approved categories. (See the list of categories in the Style guide below.) If the category doesn't exist, it will be created.
• JSSImporter uploads the package file to all configured distribution points.
• The SmartGroupTemplate.xml file tells JSSImporter to create or update a smart group called [SoftwareName]-update-smart. The criteria of this group are:
  • the computer has the software in question installed
  • the version does not match the newest version that AutoPkg found
  • the computer is a member of a group called "Testing" (which is created and maintained manually by the Casper admin)
• The PolicyTemplate.xml file tells JSSImporter to create a single Self Service policy for each product, called Install Latest [SoftwareName]. The policy:
  • installs the latest package file.
  • is scoped to the smart group mentioned above.
  • includes a Self Service icon and description.
  • category is Testing. This groups policies together under the Testing category on the Policies page of the JSS web interface to separate and distinguish them from other policies. If the Testing category doesn't exist, it will be created.
  • has an execution frequency of "Ongoing" to allow multiple runs should tests fail. However, following a successful installation, the Self Service policy performs a recon run, which will drop the computer out of the smart group, thus preventing further executions until the next update is made available. This also enables reuse of the same policy without needing to "Flush All" the policy logs.
• No groups other than the smart group mentioned above are created or modified.
• In the rare case of needing an extension attribute to determine whether a package is out-of-date, and thus used to determine membership in the smart group, extension attributes will be created and/or updated. A separate [SoftwareName]ExtensionAttribute.xml file is required for this. This is most commonly the case with apps that either don't live in /Applications or report different version numbers for CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion (Casper only uses CFBundleShortVersionString for inventory).

The cumulative effect of all this is that software managed with AutoPkg and JSSImporter will be uploaded and configured for deployment only to computers which have clearance to install it, and will require user interaction to install.

Users familiar with the recommendations developed by the Munki community will immediately recognize the notion of a Testing->Production pipeline of software. In brief, the idea is that machines in "Production" (the vast majority of managed machines) use only the software which has been vetted and tested to work. The next smaller group, "Testing", includes computers and users who can be counted on to make use of and report back on software updates, to help prove that updates are safe to deliver. *(If a preliminary "Development" level is also desired, consider using AutoPkg "install" recipes on test Macs).

It is the viewpoint of this repo's collaborators that AutoPkg/JSSImporter is best used to facilitate the testing of software updates, not to deploy them to production, and as such, we focus on making that task more streamlined, error-free, and automated. However, one of the further goals of the Style guide is to provide maximum "overridability" of these recipes so that admins choosing to deviate from this workflow can rely on consistent behavior of all JSS recipes.

Requirements and configuration

JSSImporter

These recipes are intended to be used with JSSImporter. Grab the latest package installer from the releases section, configure your API user and distribution points following the instructions in that project's README, and you're good to go.

Compatibility note: These recipes do not work with Allister Banks' jss-autopkg-addon fork, and the recipes in his repo will not work with JSSImporter.

Parent recipes

All JSS recipes rely on parent recipes found elsewhere. If you want to run a JSS recipe SoftwareName.jss.recipe, then you will need to ensure that the repository hosting it's parent recipe is also included in your AutoPkg configuration with autopkg repo-add.

App Store apps

Some of these recipes are for applications distributed through the Mac App Store. For these recipes to work, you'll need to add Nick McSpadden's AppStoreApp recipes, which in turn require the pyasn1 package to check for updates.

Furthermore, you need to have the apps installed on the machine you are running AutoPkg on in order for AutoPkg to build the package file. If you don't own a copy of Final Cut Pro, for example, you will not be able to run the FinalCutPro.jss recipe.

To add these:

# Add Nick's repository.
autopkg repo-add nmcspadden-recipes

# Install pyasn1.
pip install --user git+https://github.com/geertj/python-asn1.git#egg=pyasn1

Obviously, make sure you meet the licensing requirements for any App Store apps you intend to distribute.

Testing group

By default, JSS recipes are scoped to a smart group which requires membership in a group called "Testing." It is up to you, the Casper administrator, to create and maintain the Testing group as you see fit.

This group could include anything from a handful of IT coworkers to an entire class of devices, and can be either a smart or static group. If it's a smart group, any number of subgroups may be included for finer control.

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Style guide

Recipes included in this repo will follow these rules:

Filename

The recipe filename should be <NAME>.jss.recipe, where <NAME> is the product's name as specified throughout the entire chain of recipes to identify the product. An optional extra-description may be added after the name, by adding a hyphen, for example MicrosoftOffice2011Updates-DisabledAllQuit.jss.recipe.

Product Subfolder

Each recipe, as well as any product-specific support files, will reside in a subfolder of the main repository. The name of the subfolder should be the value used for the product NAME. Support files like icons, product-specific template files, or scripts, will be referenced as arguments by their filename only, and JSSImporter's search-path methods will locate them correctly should the recipe be overridden. Their filenames should all have the product name as a prefix, e.g. NetHackScriptTemplate.xml.

No copies of the jss-recipes mandated files PolicyTemplate.xml or SmartGroupTemplate.xml may be present in this subfolder.

Parent recipe

The recipe's ParentRecipe must be publicly available via a shared recipe repository that is part of the AutoPkg organization.

Identifier

The recipe's Identifier should be com.github.jss-recipes.jss.<product-name>, where "product-name" is that used consistently throughout the parent recipe and the JSS recipe to identify the product in question. In special cases, like where multiple recipes for the same product are desired, an optional suffix of a hyphen or underscore and a descriptor may be added (e.g. com.github.jss-recipes.jss.MicrosoftOffice2011-DisabledAllQuit).

Processing

The recipe should have a single processor stage: JSSImporter. This rule may in special circumstances be lifted, due to missing data in the ParentRecipe, like no version information being provided. However, recipe authors should endeavor to get the ParentRecipe author to include this information so as to benefit other downstream recipes.

All arguments to the JSSImporter processor should be capable of being overridden by an Input section variable.

In the Arguments section of the JSSImporter processor, all values should be text-replacement variables; for example, the value of policy_category should be: %POLICY_CATEGORY%.

In the Input section of the recipe, the variable should be defined with an ALL_CAPS name set to the values desired (and in many cases, as defined later in the style guide). Following on the previous example, the input variable would be named POLICY_CATEGORY, and should have the value Testing.

The JSSImporter processor will include at least the following arguments, and values (as specified in the Input section:

• prod_name
  • The name used consistently throughout all recipes in the chain.
  • prod_name should use the NAME input variable commonly used throughout AutoPkg recipes. This is an exception to the casing rules above.
• jss_inventory_name
  • Optional, but required if the NAME and the filename of the app bundle differ.
  • Use spaces in NAME if that's how the application is named. It's 2015. Filenames can have spaces.
• category
  • Recipes included in this repository use a limited list of package categories:
    • Computer Science
    • Digital Media
    • Games
    • Management
    • Print and Scan
    • Productivity
    • Science and Math
    • Utility
  • Admins may create overrides to specify package categories that aren't included in the standard list above.
• policy_category (Set to Testing)
• policy_template (Set to PolicyTemplate.xml)
• self_service_icon
  • Icon should be named the same as the product (e.g. NetHack.png).
  • Icon should be a PNG file.
  • Icon should be 128 x 128 pixels as per the current recommendations of JAMF.
• self_service_description
  • A short description, minus hyperbolics or sales-speak, describing what the software does.
• groups
  • Argument value should be an array exactly as per below:

   <key>groups</key>
   <array>
   	<dict>
   		<key>name</key>
   		<string>%GROUP_NAME%</string>
   		<key>smart</key>
   		<true/>
   		<key>template_path</key>
   		<string>%GROUP_TEMPLATE%</string>
   	</dict>
   </array>
  

  • Input section variables exactly as:

   <key>GROUP_NAME</key>
   <string>%NAME%-update-smart</string>
   <key>GROUP_TEMPLATE</key>
   <string>SmartGroupTemplate.xml</string>
  

  • In the case of a product requiring an extension attribute, a different smart group template will be specified.

Other arguments are optional and desired only if necessary (extension_attribute).

Policy Template

The recipe must use this repo's standard PolicyTemplate.xml for its policy template.

Extension Attributes

While the Casper Suite can include internet plugins, or other arbitrary paths in its inventory collection, it is not the default behavior. Therefore, for apps that live outside of the /Applications folder, an extension attribute should be included to manage group inclusion. This way, recipes from this repo will work immediately for admins who have not set up inventory collection beyond the default. Examples of this can be seen in the repository for more information (examples include Adobe Flash Player and Silverlight).

Also, Casper's inventory uses an app's CFBundleShortVersionString for version bookkeeping. However, some apps use that as a shortened version, and rather put the full version number in CFBundleVersion in their Info.plist. For example, Skype, according to Casper, may be version 7.10, but in fact the full version number is 7.10.0.776. For testing purposes, obviously 7.10 will not work, so an extension attribute is required.

For these purposes, a generic extension attribute and smart group template are provided at CFBundleVersionExtensionAttribute.xml and CFBundleVersionSmartGroupTemplate.xml and should be used unless further scripting is required to accurately target the product.

Extension attributes arguments should be specified in the JSSImporter/Arguments section only, as they are not intended to be overridden.

Scripts

Likewise, scripts should only be included when absolutely necessary for package installation.

Script's arguments should be specified in the JSSImporter/Arguments section only, as they are not intended to be overridden.

Linting

Finally, a check with plutil -lint <recipe_name> should pass.

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Getting help

Here are some basic steps for determining where to troubleshoot:

Many of this repositories contributors (and many Casper admins in general) can be found on the #jamfnation IRC channel, the #jamfnation room within the MacAdmins Slack team, or on the JAMF Nation discussion boards.

If you find a reproducible bug or error in one of the recipes in this repo, please submit an issue on GitHub.