How to Use Omaha Server Admin Panel

Management of application versions and builds are provided through the Admin panel. You can get access to it by http://your-domain.elasticbeanstalk.com/admin/

Distribution of Windows applications

The distribution of applications for Windows is based on the Omaha protocol. You can find more information about Omaha client here.

Applications:

You can add a new application by following the instructions below:

In the Admin panel open the “Omaha” section, choose “Applications” and click on the “Add application” button in the right top corner.
Fill-in the required fields:

All applications are identified by a couple of fields:
- Id is unique identifier in the uuid64 format with braces. Omaha client identifies applications by IDs not by names. Example of a valid ID: {B502CC20-DCFC-4B40-80C8-C3A281F8C3F7}.
- App is an application name. It’s just an alias for Id, made for easy identification of the application on the server side.

Also, you can add Data objects for your application by clicking on the Add another Data link. Data objects allow you to customize the installation process of your application. For example, you can change settings or install related applications.

where

Name indicates a type of the Data object. Legal values are "install", "untrusted" or "".
Index shows if Name is "install", the numeric index of the requested installation data has blob type.
Value contains settings in the JSON format. For example:

{
    "distribution": {
        "install_flash_player": true,
        "flash_player_url": "http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_18_plugin.exe"
    },
    "first_run_tabs": [
        "http://www.google.com/"
    ]
}

Channels:

A channel identifies the distribution channel of the application (e.g. "stable", "beta", "dev", "canary"). By default Omaha server has 3 channels: stable, beta, alpha. If you need an additional channel follow the next instructions:

In the Admin panel open the “Omaha” section, choose “Channels” and click on the “Add channel” button in the right top corner:
Fill-in the form

where Channel is a channel name.

Platforms:

The operating system family that the client is running within (e.g. "win", "mac", "linux", "ios", "android"), or "" if unknown. The operating system name should be transmitted in lowercase with minimal formatting. Default: "". We use only the "win" platform.

By default Omaha server has 2 platforms: "win" and "mac". If you need another platform, please, follow the following instructions:

In the Admin panel open the “Omaha” section, choose “Platforms” and click on the “Add platform” button in the right top corner:
Fill-in the form

where Platform is a platform name.

Versions:

Versions are installation files which are related to your application and which Omaha client will use for updates. You can add a new version of your application by following the next instructions:

In the Admin panel open the “Omaha” section, choose “Versions” and click on the “Add version” button in the right top corner:
Fill-in the form

where:

Is enabled is the flag showing whether the version is active or not. If the version is inactive, user won’t get it.
Is critical is the flag showing whether the update is critical or not. Critical update will be forcibly installed, even if Omaha server stores a larger version.
App is an application for which the version is created
Platform is an operating system family
Channel is a distribution channel
Version is a numeric version divided by dots. Max value is 255.255.65535.65535.
Release notes is a description of changes done in this version. File is an installer.

Actions

For each uploaded version you can customize a set of actions for different installation stages such as preinstall, install, postinstall and update. The example below shows how to create an action which disables automatic launching of Chrome after installation:

Click on the Add another Action link to show the New Action form
Fill-in the form

where

Event is a fixed string denoting when this action should be run. One of "preinstall", "install", "postinstall" and "update".
Run (optional) is a name of an installer binary to run.
Arguments (optional) contains arguments to be passed to that installer binary.
Successurl (optional) is A URL to be opened using the system's default web browser on a successful install.
Terminateallbrowsers (optional) If "true", close all browser windows before starting the installer binary.
Successsaction (optional) is a fixed string denoting some action to take in response to a successful install. One of: "default", "exitsilently" and "exitsilentlyonlaunchcmd".
Other attributes are additional attributes which will be passed in the Action tag.

Also you can set up partial updates, you can read about it on the Add partial update page.

Distribution of Mac applications

The distribution of applications for Mac users is based on the Sparkle protocol. If you would like to use Mac updates, firstly, you should create Application and Channel as it’s described above.

Creating a sparkle version

Version - is a .dmg file of your application.

In the Admin panel open the “Sparkle” section, choose “Sparkle versions” and click on the “Add sparkle version” button in the right top corner:
Fill-in the form

where:

Is enabled is the flag showing whether the version is active or not. If the version is inactive, user won’t get it.
Is critical is the flag showing whether the update is critical or not. Critical update will be forcibly installed, even if Omaha server has a version with a bigger version number.
App is an application for which the version is created
Channel is a distribution channel
Version is a numeric version divided by dots. Max value is 255.255.65535.65535.
Release notes is a description of changes done in this version.
File is a dmg file
DSA signature is a DSA signature of the dmg file