Garageband loops

[ndavies]

Hi all,

 

We've got Garageband on a suite of macs, some of the loops aren't available and it prompts you to download them on the workstation.

 

How can I get them on all machines without having to do this one by one.

 

The way I thought it worked was that the server gets all the updates and then dishes them out, but it appears not.

 

Any ideas?

[Robbocop]

The first thing I have to say, for legal reasons, is that you need to make sure that you have the correct licensing in place to run additional loops on your suite of Macs. Of course you do. The next is to say that Apple loops work best if they are physically installed on the local hard drive of each computer, rather than sitting on a network drive somewhere. So you might need to check whether the missing loops can be found if you search for one of them on the affected Macs. If not, you can copy them to the machines. My demonstration Mac has all of its loops here; Macintosh hard drive/Library/Audio/Apple Loops and then in subfolders Apple Loops for Garageband and all the Jam Packs. You can use Apple Remote Desktop to do all of the Macs in one go. If the loops are in the right place and not being picked up by garageband, try this: Open the Loop browser in Garageband. slide the whole interface window to the left to reveal the Finder. Locate your Apple Loops folder as above with all the loops in it. Drag that folder on top of the Loop Browser. This prompts Garageband to re-index all its loops and should put them into the Loop Browser as expected.

[sted]

there are actually quite a lot on one of the osx install disks but they dont get installed by default BUT iirfc if you load garage band and put the dvd in they can be added from there

[ndavies]

I think they are the ones Sted is talking about, because they are not on any machines, but they are listed in the loop library.

 

Still confused as to how I use ARD to deploy them all at the same time, can you explain this bit?

[Robbocop]

ARD is normally used for running PKG installers in a managed, centralised way, but you can also use it for copying files and images around. Have a look at this Apple tutorial. Check the section near the end about the "copy" function and try that. I think that if you can isolate the Apple Loops you need from the DVD, or copy the Apple Loops folder from a Mac which you know has them properly installed, you can distribute them this way much quicker than by copying machine by machine. Apple - Remote Desktop 3 - Tutorials - Software Distribution

[mac_shinobi]

ARD is normally used for running PKG installers in a managed, centralised way, but you can also use it for copying files and images around. Have a look at this Apple tutorial. Check the section near the end about the "copy" function and try that. I think that if you can isolate the Apple Loops you need from the DVD, or copy the Apple Loops folder from a Mac which you know has them properly installed, you can distribute them this way much quicker than by copying machine by machine. Apple - Remote Desktop 3 - Tutorials - Software Distribution

 

Good suggestion ref ARD as I recall trying to do this on a suite of macs when I was working in edu but found it easier to set one mac up to the latest revision ( using software updater ), run disk util to repair permissions when relevant ( before and after each major update ie going from 10.x.y to 10.x.z ), then install all relevant software along with loops etc and then create an image of this ( not sure if this is the correct way of doing it but its the way I did it anywho was to power off client mac connect via firewire cable to the OS X Server and boot the client mac in target disk mode and then use the server imaging tool to create the image of the client ) and image all the other macs with said image and make any relevant changes to the other macs ie computer name, ip address info ( if you are assigning static ip addresses to the macs ), DNS Server settings, FQDN in the network settings and any other relevant settings and then to ensure that the restrictions are being applied correctly to student logon accounts ( which presumably is pre configured on your OS X server if you are using OS X Server to do this )

 

Correct me if I am wrong on anything

[ndavies]

Cheers guys. I've found the .pkg file with the additional loops in, on the install disc. Going to install it manually tomorrow, as can't get ARD on my laptop to install the packages (it's snow and the clients are leopard, ARD is 3.3.2 on my lappy, but 3.2.1 on the clients), meaning an upgrade for the ard client requires an os update first.

 

Copying files works fine, and remote desktop works before it realises it's out of date!

 

Cheers for your help anyway. Starting to get my head round this mac admin stuff!