replacing assimilator
perhaps the osx forum was the wrong place for this.
I have a lab of 25 g4s running os9 and I use assimilator to keep them clean/behaving. What sort of setups are out there for managing OSX labs? Should I use netboot (we're on 100mBit)? Should I work something out with a roving drive and CCC when a machine totally borks or to install new stuff?
What are other netadmins doing to manage their labs? Only the 25 g4s are going to OSX within the next month, but I have 40 other machines that will migrate within 1-3 years depending on funding.
I have a lab of 25 g4s running os9 and I use assimilator to keep them clean/behaving. What sort of setups are out there for managing OSX labs? Should I use netboot (we're on 100mBit)? Should I work something out with a roving drive and CCC when a machine totally borks or to install new stuff?
What are other netadmins doing to manage their labs? Only the 25 g4s are going to OSX within the next month, but I have 40 other machines that will migrate within 1-3 years depending on funding.
Comments
Two year ago, I was doing technical support at my college, and we had assimilater... good or bad, depend of your point of view.
Well, I guess you are not looking at an assimilator-like remplacement, but rather a method to keep the computers clean. I know what students can do
What I suggest, is to create a "student" user, with auto-log/pass and the minimal permissions to run the soft they need. Since Mac OS X is unix-based and have a very powerfull user mnagement system, I think that you have no need for third-party tool.
if the student don't have the administrator pass, you can :
-block them from install app / upgrade
-block them from open or read certain folder (just have to change the owner of the folder you want to protect)
-block them to change OS X pref, networking, etc.
and a lot more...
Log in as Admin and check the System Prefs to see what you can do.