Apple remote desktop lockdown

[SC92]

Hi all,

 

Finally our imacs are going to be put in proper use next academic year, and said member of staff who teaches in the room everyday seems really enthusiastic about the whole thing! Anyway, he would like to be able to observe/control client machines from a different machine, a little bit like RM Tutor (only one I can think of at the moment). Apple remote desktop will of course do the job, but i'm just a little concerned about how much said member of staff will have access to. I'm pretty sure they won't start fiddling around, but i'd just like to make sure he only has access to what he actually needs access to. All he wants to do is observe, control, lock/unlock screens, message, log user out etc, just the basic things. I have noticed that you can just delete the scanner tool from the left hand pane, but you're able to re-add that by going to File > New Scanner. Is there a way of 'locking down' ARD so that said member of staff could only access those basic functions? I'm sure i've seen somewhere a pre-configured locked down version of ARD which has only the basic functions, but not been able to find it now that it may actually be useful - typical. Of course if there are any programs that will allow him to control OSX as such from his Windows machine - even better - but I highly doubt there are.

 

Thanks in advance

Edited May 2, 2012 by SC92

[chill3r]

this is something ive never looked into - but all applications that run on Mac have a Plist - this Plist can be changed so it can restrict things - not too sure how editable the ARD one will be - ill take a quick look and post my findings

[Carter]

ARD is not a faculty monitoring tool. You cannot lock it down so it acts just like a monitoring tool.

 

That said you can somewhat lock the lab down by configuring in the image in the lab that a particular user using ARD can only "Observe" the machines if this is what you want. See below a snapshot where I've just selected off "Observe" in the Remote Management settings.

 

[JR-PCS]

it is easy to lock down non admins for certain features of ARD. open ARD as an admin, go to preference and there is section for what features you want non admins to be able to do (see screenshot).

 

[chill3r]

Take a look at this article - this can then be sent out Via MCX

 

RemoteDesktop 3.0 Help: Creating Administrator Access Groups

[User3204]

We have Impero as our classroom control, and this allows staff to do all the usual classroom control over Apple Macs, although I can't seem to control from my Mac.

[russdev]

We have Impero as our classroom control, and this allows staff to do all the usual classroom control over Apple Macs, although I can't seem to control from my Mac.

 

Should be able to control macs no problem usually if remote control stops on mac it is firewalls on the switches that they route through. If try and remote control and then you follow this KB article and send support the log files from the mac we should be able to work out what is going on..

 

Impero - Network and Lab Management Software

 

 

Russell

[iSteve]

The management console for want of a better phrase for Impero is Windows only, even though it offers control of Mac OS machines.

 

We 'lock down' ARD for our staff. We log in, set up ARD as we wish staff to see it, then take the plist from ~/Users/Administrator/Library/Preferences/com.apple.remotedesktop.plist, then force this on the machines using Workgroup Manager. This way they only see tool bar options that they need to use, and will only pick up machine lists for the room they are in, rather than the whole site or the last room they used. Works nicely.

[mellowip1983]

To assist our Head of IT I created 2 small apple script applications that open ARD then send a lock screen command to all the computers in a group.

 

We have been asked if there is a way to block students access to the internet but the closest we have got is a similar application that closes safari

[SC92]

Thanks for the replies all! Turns out that this doesn't look likely to go ahead, but food for thought nonetheless, it's always good to know how to do these things!