Hey Nate,

I think what Karl’s doing with making sure people are using reference builds is probably more responsible than having them find out that using a hardware-specific build causes complications on other models. I’d think customizing your catalog file is what you’d want to do anyway once you’re done kicking the tires, it just requires more helpful feedback and documentation, both of which I’ll be providing pronto.
Do you want to make a generic firstboot package, with across-the-board things like time zone and other launchd-called scripting?

Hey Karl,

I think all these tests are genius(who would’ve thought or implemented the restoreProfiler? great work, love where its going), and really am chomping at the bit to contribute in every way. I’ll have a revised guide to you soon.
Could we add Greg Neagle’s payload-free package to Add-Ons? I already contacted him and got approval to point to his blog post for documentation. I’m also going to contribute a package (and an article) here on AFP548 to setup localMCX in the non-default node, just need to run more tests and clean up the text.
I also have revised (10.5 minimum) createUser (with ARD on, optionally, the right way) which dovetails into the above package by creating mcxadmin with the same admin password, just a bit more testing for that as well. I think it’ll really drive home the point about best practices for management and, with Nate’s work on firstboot/launchd, how to finish the rest of the common customizations. What do you think, could it find a home in the project? This is probably a better discussion for the mailing list, but I haven’t got a lot of traction there in the past. Thanks,

Allister

Yeah, we couldn’t fit it in the budget for MacSysAdmin, I knew I should have pawned off my MacBookAir!

And reference builds, definitively:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1633
Grey discs, definitively:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159

Allister