[Greg Neagle]

Why exactly are people enabling root?

I have never done so, and have never found a need to do so.

What are your reasons for doing it?

[Greg Neagle]

SSH is used if you turn on server-side file tracking – an SSH connection is made from the client to the server to obtain the list of items changed on the server.

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

Do the preferences listed here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2653

work for you?

[Greg Neagle]

The answer, as always, is “it depends”.

NFS pros:
Supported by lots of vendors, therefore more choices
Cross-platform between OS X and Linux/Solaris/etc
Supports fast user switching
NFS cons:
Security model may not fit your environment
Some filesystem attributes not directly supported

AFP pros:
Native Apple solution, so best Apple support
Filesystem attributes closest match for HFS+
Easy to set up and run from Apple hardware
Best support/fit for Portable Home Directories
AFP cons:
More limited support for AFP on non-Apple hardware/OS servers
Not cross-platform
Doesn’t support fast user switching

You’ll have to decide which bits are most important for your environment. NFS homes are a good fit for us, but might be a disaster in a K-12 environment…

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: christern[/u][p]Hi
I made all 3 network locations on a newly made ibook, copy the preferens plist file (/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist) USB drive, made a pkg on my computer (use pakagemaker so I could fix same errors with owner and groups) and put in that pkg i my instadmg system (custompkg, #28 of 28). made a new image and 2 hours later , success, it works, we have 3 networks locations that we want

/ christer

[/p][/QUOTE]

This should work OK as long as the hardware the image will be deployed to has the same network interfaces. It would fail with MacBook Airs and MacPros, since on a MacBook Air, en0 is AirPort, and en1 may or may not exist (and would be USB Ethernet if it did). On a Mac Pro, en0 is Ethernet, en1 is Ethernet, and en2 is AirPort…

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

I’ve not seen any problems with Firefox 3.0.3 under 10.5.5, and I deliver only the app bundle itself…

[Greg Neagle]

Chris Adams wrote a nice little Python tool (using PyObjC binding):

http://code.google.com/p/pymacadmin/source/browse/trunk/bin/create-location.py

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: f47hom[/u][p]Hello all,
So I have come to the conclusion that there is a preference or other file somewhere in the users library that is holding the old, incorrect path (faculty vs staff). If this is correct, however, I cant find that file and could really use some help from you.

dscl . read /Users/username

Will give you the details on the mobile account, including the paths to the Network Home Directory. You then might be able to edit these values.

Specifically, you’re looking for the original_home and original_home_loc attributes.

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

I’ve moved the home dir of the admin user on my images into /var for years without issues. There’s nothing in the OS that’s hard-coded to expect user homes in /Users, if there was, network home directories wouldn’t work, and neither would external users.

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

What is the output of `dscl . -read /Users/admin`

It sounds like the OS still thinks the home directory is under /Users. I’m also concerned about the reference to “/Usrs/admin”, unless that’s a typo on your part.

[Greg Neagle]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: larkost[/u][p]You just have to target all of the write commands against the target disk ($3), and give the (almost *) full path to the plist file, and that will work fine.

* You need to omit the “.plist” from the end of the path…. That reminds me to file that bug against defaults…[/p][/QUOTE]

It will work fine for global defaults (those in $3/Library/Preferences/) and non-ByHost prefs for already-existing local users. And the User Template.

[Greg Neagle]

I would think that most of these would not work in an InstaDMG workflow without modification, since you are usually targeting the startup disk with `defaults write …`. The ones that aren’t global – that is, they don’t affect /Library/Preferences/some.plist, would have to be part of a global login script to be useful – otherwise they affect the user whom the command is run as.

I used to use a combination of a StartupItem (for the global defaults), and a login script that was run for each user at startup (for the user defaults) to do these sort of things, and ti worked pretty well. But since Leopard shipped, I’ve moved as much of this as I can to local MCX records.

[Greg Neagle]

Rather than using a script and dscl to write mcx data to the local DS records, I’d take the approach of using WGM to create the MCX data for Computer Groups or Computer Records (though using Computer Groups allows a more modular approach). You’d then also use a startup script that adds the computer record for the current local machine to these Computer Groups. Finally, you would package these all up as Installer packages and drop them into your InstaDMG workflow.

So you could have a LocalMCX.pkg that just contained the local_computer computer record (/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/computers/local_computer.plist) and the script that adds the current machine’s MAC layer address to the local_computer record.
Then you’d have a separate package for each computer group that contains MCX settings. The package would generally install a single file, for example:
/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/computergroups/loginwindow_mcx.plist
or
/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/computergroups/timemachine_mcx.plist

This way you can mix-and-match local MCX settings in your InstaDMG build: if in the future you want to add or replace some settings, you can add a new package, or replace an existing one, without touching the others. You can remove a group of settings (for example, you decide to stop managing TImeMachine), by removing just that package.

[Greg Neagle]

Maybe we should be talking to the people at http://www.appdeploy.com.

They maintain a database of receipes/packages/notes for deploying Windows software. They are supported by the folks at KACE, who offer the KBOX Systems Management Appliance, which among other things, supports software deployment to OS X clients. So there should be an interest there in working silent installs of Mac OS X software as well.

-Greg

[Greg Neagle]

I had a vague recollection of the article, so Googled for “Managed Client iTunes”…

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