Installation of Adobe Creative Suite 6 hangs at AdobeHelp on Mac OS X El Capitan

I have been attempting to install Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium after upgrading to Mac OS X El Capitan.

The installation seems to go along flawlessly until it attempts to install "AdobeHelp". Running ps -aux shows the the following command remains executing:

/Volumes/CS6\ ProdPrm/Adobe\ CS6\ Production\ Premium/payloads/AdobeHelp/InstallAdobeHelp appVersion=4.0.244 appId=chc pubId=4875E02D9FB21EE389F73B8D1702B320485DF8CE.1 installerArg1=-silent installerArg2=-eulaAccepted installerArg3=AdobeHelp.air

I tried killing the process, (As suggested for the same issue on Windows) however this had no effect.

I tried manually running the command, (With sudo) which output the following on first attempt and then ceased execution:

DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x29441d0, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x29437f0
DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x29497c0, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x2949090
2015-10-02 12:10:28.713 Adobe AIR Installer[564:9294] !!! BUG: The current event queue and the main event queue are not the same. Events will not be handled correctly. This is probably because _TSGetMainThread was called for the first time off the main thread.

And then this on the second attempt and remained executing indefinitely:

DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x282c2e0, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x281af40
DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x282e110, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x282d9e0
DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x422b90, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x421ee0
DVFreeThread - CFMachPortCreateWithPort hack = 0x423470, fPowerNotifyPort= 0x423450

Solution 1:

Here is a workaround for this issue:

1. Restart the system, as the installer had to be force quit, and could not be relaunched easily.
2. Mount the ProductionPremium_CS6_LS7.dmg disk image. (Or I assume any of the other CS6 products)
3. In Finder navigate to CS6 ProdPrm, then Adobe CS6 Production Premium, then payloads, then AdobeHelp, and execute Adobe Air Install.app.

4. Once the previous step is complete navigate to CS6 ProdPrm, then Adobe CS6 Production Premium, then payloads, then AdobeHelp, and execute AdobeHelp.air.

   Note: As Karl pointed out, the AIR installer bundled with certain CS6 products may not install on Mac OS X El Capitan. If this is the case, you will need to navigate to https://get.adobe.com/air/ and and download and install Adobe AIR.

5. Once the previous step is complete navigate to CS6 ProdPrm, then Adobe CS6 Production Premium, and run Install.app.

Solution 2:

The above answer almost worked fully for me. Basically I think the biggest problem is the Adobe Air. The one included with the CS6 installer just wouldn't install. I downloaded the most recent version of Adobe Air from Adobe.com and installed that and then followed step 4 of the instruction above:

4. Once the previous step is complete navigate to CS6 ProdPrm, then Adobe CS6 Production Premium, then payloads, then AdobeHelp, and execute AdobeHelp.air

Once this was installed, I was able to install CS6 normally with no problems.

Solution 3:

I think I may have found another and somewhat easier solution to this issue. I have been trying to install DesignStandard_CS6 and experienced the same issue, with the installer hanging at AdobeHelp. I tried navigating to the /Volumes/CS6 DesignStd/Adobe CS6 Design Standard/payloads/AdobeHelp and just running the Adobe AIR Installer. I found it was blocked by the Security & Privacy setting "Allow apps downloaded from:" which was set to the default "Mac App Store and identified developers".

This gave me the idea to change this setting to "Anyway" and hey presto, the installer completed when I tried it again.

I have not tried and tested this beyond my case, but it seems to make sense that this is what was causing it to hang.

Hope this helps.