Mac Network Questions

[cmcnally]

Hi Guys,

 

Our Mac Pro server recently failed because of a security update (No back-up, lesson well and truly learned). Before I had our network set-up with 23 client macs binded to OD and was using Deploy Studio to set them up from a Monolithic image. The users had been set up with local home folders. I rebuilt the server but now its causing issues with the local profiles. I'm still relatively new to Mac Administraion and I want to take the time now to rebuild the network completely. This time I'm going to try using thin imaging and have some questions.

 

Local profiles - Before I had used local profiles because I had read iMovie doesn't play nice with Network folders. Is this still the case? I only have 4tb of network space to accommodate 100ish users. Would it be feasible for me to even set up Network profiles?

 

iMovie/Garageband - When I set up the clients I need to install iM/GB + the loops etc.. Can I download this to the server and send it out to the clients instead of downloading on each machine individually?

 

TimeMachine/Backup - What is the best way to back-up the pupils work? TimeMachine or something like CCCloner?

 

Shared Folders - How do I mount sharepoints to the dock depending on the user group? Anyone got any good guides for Profile Manager?

 

Anti-Virus/Malware - What solutions do you use? Any free ones?

 

Homepage - How do I get Safari to open on login to a specific webpage?

 

 

Thanks guys, any brief overview on how you do those things would help me immensely.

 

C

[andyturpie]

Not a big expert on macs, but have you checked out Casper Suite?

[Brimstone]

Hi Guys,

 

Our Mac Pro server recently failed because of a security update (No back-up, lesson well and truly learned). Before I had our network set-up with 23 client macs binded to OD and was using Deploy Studio to set them up from a Monolithic image. The users had been set up with local home folders. I rebuilt the server but now its causing issues with the local profiles. I'm still relatively new to Mac Administraion and I want to take the time now to rebuild the network completely. This time I'm going to try using thin imaging and have some questions.

 

Local profiles - Before I had used local profiles because I had read iMovie doesn't play nice with Network folders. Is this still the case? I only have 4tb of network space to accommodate 100ish users. Would it be feasible for me to even set up Network profiles?

 

iMovie/Garageband - When I set up the clients I need to install iM/GB + the loops etc.. Can I download this to the server and send it out to the clients instead of downloading on each machine individually?

 

TimeMachine/Backup - What is the best way to back-up the pupils work? TimeMachine or something like CCCloner?

 

Shared Folders - How do I mount sharepoints to the dock depending on the user group? Anyone got any good guides for Profile Manager?

 

Anti-Virus/Malware - What solutions do you use? Any free ones?

 

Homepage - How do I get Safari to open on login to a specific webpage?

 

 

Thanks guys, any brief overview on how you do those things would help me immensely.

 

C

 

The short answer will be Mac OS X does not in any way support network based user accounts even just using OD...

[Guest MD5T]

You can get mac OS X working in a windows environment we've successfully done it!

[denzal2k4]

Yep we have macs logging on with windows credentials and mapping their home drives, iMovie doesn't play well with network drives and our workaround was to put a USB stick in each mac and use that as the iMovie library. We have had a few issues such as the Macs create new library/ Documents inside the users home drive which can cause some issues, which we could only resolve by deleting those folders.

 

Adding to the domain from memory is something like system preferences, users, login items? then enter the domain details, you also change the machine name in sys pref, network shares (or similar), you can set mapped drives in profile manager, just make a group and add the devices to that group, then hidden away somewhere in settings there is mapped drive bit which takes a smb:// share address.

 

Our server is on it's last legs and we are looking to try and backup all the profile manager settings and deploy studio and migrate them to a new server, so any backup solutions would be good...

[Martyn_OIAM]

Re: iMovie. While not ideal. I have partitioned the hard drive on the local machines. In (Part 2) put the source video files (rushes) in a folder and given students permissions to read only. Created another folder and put a folder within so, upon student first firing up iMovie, they direct it to their own folder on Part 2.

Encouraged regular exports of the videos v1,v2 etc to be uploaded on the students Google Drive. When the assignment is finished, I will back up all the files to Google Drive.

[SamanthaD]

Dragging this back up - we've put symbolic links in to map the iMovie folder onto the local drive - user sees no difference. We have also used this trick for the Documents folder! Re Safari opening up a specific webpage at logon, you can specify Safari to open at logon using Profile Manager but I haven't been able to configure a homepage yet (though I'm trying to do it with Chrome).