JR-PCS

From Finder, select Go from the top menu bar and then select Go To Folder... Then type ~/Library/Preferences/ and click Go. You will see com.apple.sidebarlist.plist in that folder.

You might be able to bind to OD on the 10.8 mac and then open WGM, and at the connect screen press Command+D and then click the globe symbol to browse LDAPv3. This is not ideal though, due to the different OS versions.

In the past I have used this - Passenger: The Mac Server Account Creation Utility

Thats good, I'm glad they have implemented something like that as it kinda made it pointless having a profile that could be removed.

I remember playing with this ages ago, and unless it has changed I don't think there is a way to stop the end user from removing the profile from there device. Otherwise its good, and free!

As Ross has already said, for Mac management Profile manager is still not very good, even with unfiltered internet. However if you want to manage iPads I can see why you may want to use it. Have you tried using a site such as Firebind Inc. to check your ports are indeed open. By the way I presume your Simon? Not sure if you remember me? I set up the first load of macs with you in your music dept all those years ago. Hope your well?

Not sure why yours is so slow, but that is not normal for Deploystudio. I'm sure I often get up to 50mbps from a mac mini and more from an Xserve.

Are you multicasting your deploystudio images and if you are, have you set an appropriate speed for multicasting? Deploystudio is no slower than anything else out there if you configure it correctly. I suppose other bottlenecks could be a slow ethernet connection going to your netboot server, or using a mac mini server which only has a 2.5" SATA 7200rpm HD, instead of a SAS based Xserve or Mac Pro.

Been doing some more testing today and this is what I have found: - Unreliable at removing policies I had previously applied to a Mac client and was then attempting to remove. - There doesn't seem to be a built in section to do finder preferences in profile manager like there is in WGM. - Profile manager generally seem more hassle and time consuming to use than WGM (but I suppose I have been using WGM for a decade now). I think I will only be using profile manager for iOS management and continue to use WGM for Mac management as ultimately it works flawlessly and I can do everything I want to do with it very easily. If in the future Apple forces me to use profile manager I will have to put up with it, and just hope that it finally becomes an actual usable improvement on WGM.

I've been playing around with Mountain Lion server, and was very glad that Apple continued to offer Workgroup manager as a method for policy management. I was surprised when there was talk that this might disappear as it makes sense to keep it for those that prefer it. Especially when considering Apple haven't developed workgroup manager much since 10.5 and yet it still was doing a great job of management. Ultimately there was not much that has needed to change in WGM and with the option to add your own .plist files you can pretty much manage anything you want. I have looked at the new features of Profile manager in Mountain Lion and I must say it seems an improvement, though of course I have only put it in a test environment so far and so only time will tell how good it will be in a functioning environment. I like the fact that you can manage all the OSX settings just as easy as you can in WGM, you can add any custom plists too which is important. The only thing I have not tried yet is Folder Redirection, but I'm sure there will be a way to include this. So then comes a decision, continue to use WGM that has always been reliable and fast in the past or start to use Profile Manager? Its clear that Apple wants users to move to profile manager and now that it can do all the things that WGM can do and also manage iOS and other new features it probably makes sense to move to it. I suppose the issues I still have with profile manager is that it seems slower to use and navigate (in comparison to WGM), and custom plist management looks quite messy if you have a lot of them. There is also sometimes an issue of getting profile manager to work correctly due to firewall and proxy settings in place. I know some schools have little control of these settings and can't easily open ports. I will be putting it in its first working environment in a few weeks time so I will be sure to give an update soon. What are others thoughts on Mountain Lion server? And will you be continuing with WGM or moving to Profile Manager?

Yeah that was not fun! I remember doing a large install of Macs at a university about 7 or 8 years ago and we deployed the image using about 10 external hard disks that we would boot from and then restore using disk utility. We had about 300 or 400 macs to image over 3 or 4 different sites about 30 miles apart and it took a good few weeks to get it all done!

Surprised that Bombich has done this, as all CCC does is an rsync AFAIK. Its a good gui but now that it charges it is no better than superduper or many of the other cheap cloning software out there. Think I will keep hold of the final free version. However, the one I am surprised is still free is Deploystudio. I reckon if they charged £50 for it, most schools would still buy it and they would probably make £500k within there first 18 months.

Never tried this but don't see why it would not work. Change the default app for a file extension and then add the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist in ~/Library/Preferences to workgroup manager. I presume you know how to change the default app for a file extension? (cmd+I on a file, change open with to preferred app and click change all button, repeat for all file extensions.)

why can't you change the default application? You could set up squidman as I mentioned in my previous post.

I was expecting you to say TMG, as have seen issues with it on macs before. In the past I have set up a squid proxy server on a mac server, which points to the main proxy server using a particular user account (e.g AD account called macuser). You can set this up easily using squidman. Then point the macs to the mac proxy server that you installed squid on to.