This last week the University finally got a site license for SPSS. This is a huge deal since I’ve had to run SPSS on a Terminal Server the past several years and have people connect to that with Remote Desktop to run SPSS.
With the site license came the ability to both do individual installs, which are tied to a specific machine, and the ability to use a Network License. For doing individual installs, I’d recommend the silent install option, which fellow Mac Admin Patrick Gallagher has detailed instructions on how to do here.
I really really didn’t want to go to each machine and do the install (even though the silent install didn’t require that), and I’d eventually like to put it on our image… so the network license sounded very promising. The idea being, you point the install at a license server, and as long as it can get the okay to run, it doesn’t care what machine it’s on.
Central Campus IS runs the license server (so I really have no idea how it’s setup/configured), so I just installed SPSS on my office computer, chose “Network License”, pointed it at the server, and it runs without any further licensing, EULA, etc. Sweet. Now, to see if I can just package that up and deploy it via Apple Remote Desktop.
So, I create a package with Iceberg of /Applications/IBM, and /Library/Application Support/IBM, and install it on a computer. And it works! So, we have a very simple installer for deploying SPSS to lab computers without having to license individual machines.
One word of caution though, since I spent 2 hours trying to figure this out. SPSS for the Mac requires a UserShell be set for the user running the program. There are some shell scripts or something that have to run in the background, and without a UserShell, they don’t work. So if you’re using Open Directory accounts, make sure they have a UserShell set before trying to run the program.
Good luck!
