My approach to working with configuration management systems such as Jamf Pro Cloud is to be as hands off as possible when it comes to software updates. In this day and age there’s much smarter ways of ensuring your devices have the latest packages after imaging than to manually specify the installation package to the management platform.
For the majority of commodity software packages these days, it’s often possible to pull the latest version of an application straight from the vendors sites before an automated installation. That’s exactly what we’re going to do today:
-
-
- Create a script titled “Install Google Chrome”
- Add the following to the script:
#!/bin/bash
#make temp directory
mkdir ~/ChromeTemp
cd ~/ChromeTemp
#remove any existing installations
rm -rf /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/
#Installing Chrome
curl -L -O "https://dl.google.com/chrome/mac/stable/GGRO/googlechrome.dmg"
hdiutil mount -nobrowse googlechrome.dmg
cp -R "/Volumes/Google Chrome/Google Chrome.app" /Applications
hdiutil unmount "/Volumes/Google Chrome"
#Clean up
rm googlechrome.dmg
rmdir ~/ChromeTemp
exit - Create a policy that runs the script at your specified trigger time. I choose to set the frequency to run once after device enrolment – After it’s installed, Google Chrome will update itself as needed (providing you haven’t put any measures in place to prevent this).
- Within your new policy, add rules to kill any running instances and remove existing installations as described in How to stop running applications via Jamf MDM.
-
Note:
Do be aware that since you’re essentially pulling software from a vendors repository, you’re at the mercy of whatever they supply behind the link. So be mindful to only use this method with vendors you absolutely trust.