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Mac Systems Management
johannacw writes "This story has in-depth info about managing Macs using Apple's Managed Preferences architecture. It covers how to use the 14 built-in systems-management areas, how preferences interact, how to secure workstations, and how to help users access resources including applications and printers. It's a must-read for any systems admin working in a Mac or mixed environment. Written by Ryan Faas, this is a follow-up to his popular Inside Apple's Workgroup Manager."
Just as deployable as MS AD Group Policy: you define policy for the domain, and member computers pick it up. Obviously, you need a domain master, and you need to bind the target computers to the domain. But this is no different to any other directory service.
You can, and it works fine. It isn't quite as easy as editing /etc/fstab (here's /etc/fstab from a computer I'm currently sshed into...
/etc/fstab.hd /etc/mtab but that could be my memory playing tricks on me. However, the pretty little GUI for editing that file is 100% scriptable from the command line, and so writing scripts to do remote system administration is considered sensible.
andrea-lakelands-computer:~ corrin$ cat
IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents.
--
As you can see, apart from the warning it now contains nothing (this is on 10.4.10). I think on 10.3 it contained the warning and mounted volumes ala
Having said that, some people don't like working like that and those people get pretty little gui tools. Even more scary, some of those people are syadmins - I know because I used to work with one. They had been an OS 7, OS 8, OS 9 sysadmin before OS X came out and there was no way they were going to stop using their way of doing things just because there was a new version of the operating system. Used to drive me nuts watching them work until I trained myself to turn a blind eye.
In most cases a "golden triangle" is used where the Mac is bound to both Active Directory and Open Directory. The login credentials for users are managed in Active Directory, where as the managed preferences for the workstations are managed in Open Directory. It's a pretty common setup.
If you really need to blend in with your Active Directory environment, you can bypass workgroup manager altogether and go with ADmit Mac by Thursby Software. Though on the pricey side, it allows you to do much more from with AD than the standard features of OS X. The last time I checked, it even allowed you to apply certain types of group policies onto the managed Macs... very cool stuff.
You mean like:
Mac OS X Server Command-Line Administration PDF
Here's a web page with all the manuals for Mac OS X Server, lots of good information there:
Apple Server Documentation
Sapere aude!