ExpressView MacOS X installer

[etresoft]

I just installed ExpressView for MacOS X. I noticed that the installer was taking a while to run for such a small package. So I opened up the log. Here is what I found:

chown root:admin "/"
chmod 775 "/"
chown root:admin "/Library/"
chmod 775 "/Library/"
chown -R 501:admin "/Library/Application Support/"
chown root:admin "/"
chmod 775 "/"
chown root:admin "/Applications/"
chmod 775 "/Applications/"
chown -R 501:admin "/Applications/ExpressView.app/"
chown root:admin "/"
chmod 775 "/"
chown root:admin "/Library/"
chmod 775 "/Library/"
chown root:admin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"
chmod 775 "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"
chown -R 501:admin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/NPExView.plugin/"
chown root:admin "/"
chmod 775 "/"
chown root:admin "/Library/"
chmod 775 "/Library/"
chown root:admin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"
chmod 775 "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"
chown -R 501:admin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/NPEXVIEW/"

I'm just shocked. How dare you do this! This is absolutely inexcusable.

[jskiffington]

First, thanks very much for your post.

Second, I understand that this is not ideal behavior. However, we implemented this methodology to install the ExpressView plug-in for all users. This is the reason why you are required to enter an administrator password to install the plug-in.

I will make sure that the next version of ExpressView for Mac resolves this issue. Please check back for more information or subscribe to our product updates RSS feed at h_t_t_p://w_w_w.lizardtech.com/files/rss/updates.xml

Jon Skiffington
Sr. Product Manager
jskiffington@lizardtech.com

[etresoft]

[quote="jskiffington"]First, thanks very much for your post.

Second, I understand that this is not ideal behavior. However, we implemented this methodology to install the ExpressView plug-in for all users. This is the reason why you are required to enter an administrator password to install the plug-in.
[/quote]

Requiring an administrator password is not such a big deal. Doing chmod and recursive chown on system directories is a very big deal. For one thing, you are changing permissions and ownership on lots and lots of files that aren't yours. I had to reinstall Photoshop after this because my license files were modified.

When you build a MacOS X installer, you create the package with the correct permissions. Then, the installer, running as root, installs them with those permissions. You shouldn't ever change system permissions and ownership like this in a postflight script. None of those commands I listed in my first post should be executed by any installer.

I immediately used the Disk Utility tool to repair my system permissions. However, that tool doesn't do anything for 3rd party software.

[jtombs]

Yes, I have the same really irritating problem. The installer messed up permissions on the whole contents of /Library/Application Support. What are you thinking, modifying files that have nothing to do with your installation? I'm trying to fix it now, but I'm going to be hating LizardTech if I have to take hours in the middle of a busy workday to reinstall CS4. If you can't fix this right away, you need to put a warning on the installer: "Do not install this plugin if you want to use Photoshop."