Adobe Acrobat – Admin password / self heal problems.
Adobe CS and Acrobat Pro/Reader are unfortunately not the easiest applications to deploy in IT, on either the Mac or PC. A common problem is having general users receive a query for administrator credentials when they open Acrobat after installation. This is caused by Adobe Acrobat running through a “Self Heal” procedure when it’s opened. Many times it’s caused by Acrobat wanting to become the default PDF reader for Safari.
You can minimize the chance of this happening by modifying the Self Heal XML file that is created after installing Acrobat. Please note that this IS NOT RECOMMENDED by Adobe, but seems to be the a common modification amongst IT departments rolling out Acrobat. The file to edit is /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/AcroEFGPro90SelfHeal.xml (for Adobe Acrobat Pro – Reader may have a slightly different name/location. A quick summary of changes made to the XML file:
Change the string of “YES” to “NO“
Change the string of “REQUIRED” to “NO“
Depending on the flavor of Acrobat, you may also see a “FIRST RUN” value as well. This value should also be changed to “NO“. These changes are case sensitive. Also note you will see the “required” key in lower case letters many times in the XML file. These should not be changed. Only the strings previously mentioned should be changed, and they are always capitalized.
Sometimes you will continue to receive the admin username/password request even after modifying the self heal XML file. To remedy this, I’ve found that logging in under a clean admin account, configuring the Adobe Acrobat Pro/Reader preferences as desired, will result in the following .plist files being modified in ~/Library/Preferences.
com.adobe.acrobat.90.sh.plist
com.adobe.acrobat.pdfviewer.plist
com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
If you’re in the image creation process when doing these configurations/testing, you can copy these preference files to the /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences directory, and once your image is complete, new users who login to the system will receive these modified prefrence files by default. You could also deploy these changes in .pkg file, and have a script copy these preferences to the User Template and existing user home directories. The Casper Suite allows you to build specialized packages that can deploy these changes to both the User Template and existing user directories, if needed. Although I haven’t tried, I would guess these preferences could also be managed by MCX/Workgroup Manager if you have your Macs bound to an Open Directory server and are managing them in that manner.
Click here for a .pdf of the Self Heal XML file. Feel free to try it out, modify, and use if needed. This is the self heal file for Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. Those for Reader and version 8 of Acrobat Pro are different, so don’t try and use this one. Instead, compare the changes made on this file and apply to yours as needed. Good luck.
Special thanks to those who posted on the topic on the Mac Enterprise mailing list.
