Replacing Assimilator

thepeopleselbowthepeopleselbow
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
got a lab of 30 os9 machines that run great thx to assimilator. What the heck am I going to use when we move to OSX next month?



Any lab admins your adv/exp would be precioussss yesssss.



Lab is like this:

25 Pmac G4s 256mb ram etc. 100mBit ethernet all around. Got a server (already OSX server 10.2) with 150gigs of storage + 3 hp printers etc.



the pmacs represent 1/3 of the lab overall, the rest of the machines are at least a year away from OSX, probably more (there are 40 that are too old for osx). So what ever I do needs to be minorly scaleable in the next 1-4 years.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    What do you cansider to be too old for X? Beige G3s and B&W G3s work fine (300 MHz+ at least)
  • Reply 2 of 3
    thepeopleselbowthepeopleselbow Posts: 10member
    haha our "older" machines are pmac 7300s. We have some beige g3s that are probably moving out of the lab to grad student offices etc when we replace them with g5s in august. We also have iMac DV 400s that may go to OSX next year, but there is simply no need this year (they are language learning stations). The g4s are in a graphics teaching lab and hence would benefit the most from OSX as we bought all the latest adobe/macromedia licenses.



    but the main issue is, I can't find any software package thus far that can do for OSX what Assimilator does for OS9. I am considering things like Netboot tied into our campus active directory servers (campus kerberos logins university wide).
  • Reply 3 of 3
    jellytusslejellytussle Posts: 86member
    Look at radmind (www.radmind.org) from umich. It will do all that Assimilator did, and more. Also check out www.bombich.com for NetRestore and CCC. A quick quide to zero-touch config:



    1. build template Mac with OS plus baseload plus radmind client plus ARD.



    2. Use NetRestore and NetBoot to push this onto clients.



    3. Use radmind to update various loadsets to differing clients.



    4. If you ever need to re-image, use ARD to remote-set clients back to an autopilot NetBoot image, plus a postflight script to repersonalise clients by either MAC address or IP from your DHCP server config - leave to cook while you have a well-deserved long nap and bingo. Never left your office.



    easy!
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