davidacland

Hi @AliG A full guide would be a bit tricky here but to get you started, we use rsync in a script to do the sync. This can be quite difficult to get just right so if you want it simpler, you could try out the standard home directory sync feature in OS X. We personally don't use it as there are a few bugs, but if you're not too keen on scripting or terminal commands then it will probably be your only option.

I'm a fan of AirServer but might have to give Mirroring360 a go. There's definitely a use case for these tools so teachers can present their iPad screen on the projectors. Going the other way I've tried a bunch of remote desktop apps like Splashtop and solutions from Microsoft and Citrix. The user experience is poor at best and not really playing to the iPad's strengths. Its just turning it into a (not very effective) netbook.

Sounds good. This is the same route we've taken for client sites that were using deep freeze. We always found DF too heavy handed and an extra burden when it came to patch management etc. The only extra exception we had to include (in some cases) were specialist labs that were leaving Mac Pros doing rendering jobs etc. In those cases we only set the data to delete once per week. Regarding profiles and profile manager, it might be worth trying the newest version of Munki instead. PM is a bit unstable and could cause more problems than it solves.

We normally use Sophos at our sites, in some cases we use McAfee as an alternative. No major issues with either of them

Hi, The Mac translates the \ into / automatically. A ? in the dock is quite common as the dock can load before the Mac has had a chance to connect to the network share. We normally mount the share via a login script instead and add to the dock using dockutil.

Hi, This is an on-going issue with 10.10 Macs, normally when connected to an LDAP service like AD. There are a bunch of semi-successful responses here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=12589

Hi, I'm a bit late to the conversation but thought I'd chime in. I've setup similar solutions for a few hundred schools over the past couple of years. Unchecking the "force local home directory on startup disk" option sets the Mac to use the SMBHome attribute as the network home so no data is stored locally. This configuration would be great if it worked, but generally its slow and unstable. Leaving the option ticked and using mobile home syncing gets around the performance issue but is also quite unstable as Apple's implementation of home syncing isn't very reliable. The most stable setup is how you had it configured initial, local homes, mounting the users network home on the desktop and dock. This requires the user to copy any important files to the server before logging off. We have a home syncing solution built- in-house but this took several years to develop and isn't something we would recommend unless you have a lot of free time!

The process all sounds ok. I normally prefer to do a clean install and migrate services and data to it though. Usually has less issues that way. David Acland - Amsys

They've been deprecated but do still work. The main benefit of using LaunchD is the ability to add multiple items to the /Library/LaunchAgents folder. The login window preference file is an xml key/value pair and can only hold one entry. The main risk of using login hooks is that Apple actually pull the functionality completely, breaking some of your setup.

I'm not sure what role the Mac server is playing in the setup. Are the Macs joined directly to AD or are they using OD on the Mac server? It sounds like a networking issue, particularly as you mention that plugging in the old box again lets the Macs login. The first step on a Mac client will be to test if you can reach the domain controller. You can use "ping domain.controller.address" in the Terminal on an OS X client to see if the DC is reachable. On the Mac server, depending on the services its running they can be a lot more fragile than Windows servers, particularly regarding IP address changes. If it is configured with a standard school setup, it is probably running Open Directory and either Workgroup Manager or Profile Manager. The Open Directory service is particularly sensitive to IP changes, name changes, DNS record changes etc so it may be broken if these have been edited. Depending on the overall issue there could be a huge number of troubleshooting steps to go through. You might want to consider getting some Mac experienced help in if it is causing big problems for your users. David Acland - Amsys

Hi, If any of the devices are desktops (iMacs and Mac Minis), I would recommend using Ethernet. 802.1x WiFi on OS X is often troublesome. For those that must use WiFi, the first thing to determine is whether it is struggling to get a stable network connection or a stable connection to the AD domain controller. When you have one that is failing to login as an AD user, login as the local admin, test connectivity to other network services (file server etc) and see if you can browse AD at all (you can use dscl in the Terminal). If you can connect to other network services but not join AD, it would indicate that the network connection is OK and you need to troubleshoot the connection to the AD DC.

Last time I tried using Munki with IIS was about 2 years ago. It wasn't good. Apache will install and run under Windows, it just requires a high hardware spec and is noticeably slower than Linux.

If its 10.9 or 10.0 I would set those with configuration profiles. If you do a search on github you will probably find some that have already been created.

I would personally go for a Linux/UNIX server if you can. Apache on Windows has a habit of under performing. If its of any use we've just updated our blog on Munki 2, although a lot of our Munki 1 articles are still relevant... Munki 2: Upgrading Your Munki Repo and Administration Mac

This is usually just a system or network account so you can reset using System preferences or Active Directory Users & Computers (if you're tying it into AD). Not sure what DS app you can't get into though, is it the Admin console or the runtime? David Acland - Amsys

We normally use Meraki access points for wireless unless its for a few users. You can manage them all through a web interface. That being said, if they've already got the Apple base stations it wouldn't be enough of a case to throw them away and change. I would only go for Meraki if the client didn't have anything. For backups, I assume you're talking about Macs and not iPads? Time Machine might cause a few technical headaches as its easy to setup but can also fail on a regular basis.

Hi, When you use the "Use UNC path to derive network home location" checkbox in Directory Utility it puts the top level share on the desktop and the users network home in the Dock. This is a feature of the AD plugin in directory utility. When the user logs in the Dock icon often shows as a ?. This is a known bug that has been around since 10.3 I'm afraid. We work around this by unchecking the "Use UNC path..." checkbox and using a login script to mount the drive. We don't often add the icon to the Dock but if we do need to we use dockutil in a script. For shared network drives, if you are deploying via Profile Manager, this will only add them to the desktop as its a different process to the mounting of the user home via directory utility. If you wanted them added to the dock you would have to use a dock config profile in profile manager or a dockutil script. Hope this helps. David Acland - Amsys

You could try single user mode and: mount -uw / # To make the boot drive writable diskutil repairPermissions / # To repair the permissions

Hi, iPads don't have user logins and can't be joined to a domain so Kerberos isn't an option I'm afraid. You could build some kind of single sign-on into a web or native app (possibly) but beyond that the base iOS doesn't support it.

Hi, A quick fix might be to try an alternative browser, either Chrome or Firefox. if they are on 10.5 it sounds like they are 2007-2008 models so will be quite far past their life expectancy.

The "crashing 50% through boot up" is still an open issue with Yosemite so if it is possible to hold off a little longer, I would. Or have a roll back option if you deploy and start getting this issue. The problem is boot cache related. Sometimes booting into safe mode / verbose mode or single user mode fixes it temporarily but the issue does come back. There is a possible fix, adding the following to /etc/rc.server: /usr/sbin/BootCacheControl jettison On the server side, you will be looking to switch to to Profile manager as Workgroup manager isn't supported any more. That has a lot of issues in itself. We host Casper servers for our clients as we were seeing so many bugs with Profile Manager. David Acland - Amsys

Not sure about runnign it with Workgroup Manager. Are you talking about the LoginWindow preferences or something else? For now I would run it as a LogoutHook. Hopefully Apple aren't planning on dropping that functionality as there's nothing to replace it! David Acland - Amsys

You can check the warranty status of the device here: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do Apple's warranty is normally for component failure and not accidental (or deliberate) damage. I have heard before that there is some flexibility if you take a cracked iPad into an Apple Store but I wouldn't rely on that. David Acland - Amsys

To create a base image we nearly always use autodmg now. If we need to "install" OS X instead, I've used createosxinstallpkg a few times which works really well. It creates a PKG installer of the install app that can be dropped into a deploy studio workflow. Although there is no sysprep for OS X, its not advised to create images from booted systems these days as it has a habit of causing odd issues. David Acland - Amsys

Based on the description it can only be something in that users home folder (stored in /Users/username). The settings should be stored in the user's home library folder as @furby said, although this could be in caches, application support, containers, preferences or in lots of other folders. Personally I would backup the users data folders (documents, desktop etc, specifically leaving ~/Library), then delete (or rename the home folder for the user in /Users/username) and have the user log back in. Hope this helps. David Acland - Amsys