iMacs not shutting down from xserve

[rolfea]

Before anyone shouts at me for not noticing the solution for, what might be, a simple problem, I haven't been working with Macs for long at all, I prefer Windows .

 

However, the problem is;

We have a medium size Mac network with an Xserve with Leopard (10.5.4) and about 50 client iMacs also with leopard (10.5.5) and are currently trying to set all the clients to shut down every evening using the workgroup manager on the Xserve, but when I return in the morning they are all still awake.

 

All the clients are in groups for the departments the are used in (Music and Art for example).

 

I have not only set the energy saving schedule in each machine group, but have also set the schedule for each indevidual machine in the workgroup manager, still doesn't want to know and stays on all night.

 

The schedule hasn't been set on all the machines locally as I thought it would work just from the Xserve.

 

Anyone know of this happening else where, or what could be going wrong?

[Face-Man]

I've got the same problem here. we use remote desktop and it would appear just to put the imac in stand-by. I also can't get wake up on Lan to work either

[DMcCoy]

I don't believe they support WOL when actually powered off, although they will wake from sleep if you have it enabled (administrative wake option in power iirc).

[tim.dalton]

Seen similar problems here, never really got it to work from workgroup manager. Setting the options on the local machine does seem more successful though.

 

Tim

[matt40k]

Anything in the bios?

 

[nonsense]

Personally, I would look at it on Friday, and lie to yourself, stating that the Macs are automatically energy efficient and turn themselves automatically off when your not watching then before you turn up they are turned on and ready for use. After solving such a major problem to decide to buy yourself a large pint (or whatever you enjoy)

[/nonsense]

[rolfea]

Setting the options on the local machine does seem more successful though.

 

Slight problem with that is the effort of going round all the machines and setting it, although it's not difficult, it is time consuming.

 

Matt's idea of a large pint is tempting, however the whole eco-friendly school idea goes out the window.

 

It looks like a fix is slowly floating out the window to me.

[HodgeHi]

If you have set them to start up at a set time of the day and are not in the School when this happens to see, if you are running ARD you could send a terminal command to see how long they have been up.

 

uptime

 

This will tell you how long the machines have been up for.

 

Now if you run boot camp and the machines are in Windows they will not start up will they would if you shut them down in OS X the night before, but you were on about shutting them down. I found that due to them being boot camped that shutting them down using WGM didn't always work and since they were in Windows they time seems to get screwy and it then no longer works as expected. I set up a schedule in ARD and left it running which shuts the machines down at a set time.

 

I have never had an issue with this. Remember to set them to shutdown and not restart or sleep. Save the schedule. I also have a batch file that shuts down the windows side at the same time.

 

shutdown /s /m \\machine name /t 120 /c "the machine will shutdown in 2 minutes"

 

Using this set up, i have more problems with Windows than i do with OS X, since windows wn't run the script as the screen is off although the machine is still on and not in standby. I am going to try the shutdownertron as soon as i get the time to.

[matt40k]

...and for the cost of that you could buy APC managed PDU (you can turn on\off remotely - over IP)

[HodgeHi]

...and for the cost of that you could buy APC managed PDU (you can turn on\off remotely - over IP)

 

I'm assuming that you can't asset manage your macs using a PDC, or you can't remotely see what each machine is doing, or that you can't spotlight search every mac on the network for a specific file and then copy it to your own desktop, or that you can't lock all the screens with a message to tell the kids to turn around, or extract a report of all the hardware in the machine and get a list of the active mac addresses and export them into a csv file to use to create a batch file that creates a reserved address table in your dhcp?

 

It does have it flaws as well though. IE it seems to not like running software update remotely. It also can be a bit buggy at times (especially when unlocking screens). personally i think ARD is a god send when managing multiple macs on a network, and it really does need to be seen to see the benefits. I have used netop 4 for the Windows side. I found it to be so bad i uninstalled it wrote it off as a bad purchasing decision (not one made by me).

 

I think ARD is only about £300 for a unlimited client license?

 

Edited November 4, 2008 by HodgeHi

[rolfea]

For the moment I think a big message on the wall saying "Shut down all machines" will do the trick

 

Thanks for all your help, and might look into investing in ARD in the future

[matt40k]

I think it's pretty pointless bootcamp'ing Mac IMHO.

 

APC pdu can have a client installed on the machine that will graceful shut them down, it also supports monitors and such like. Not really for educational desktops tho.