Use The Terminal to Setup Apple Remote Desktop Computer Info #1

Computer Info #1 from the Command Line

Part of my client management process involves using the “Computer Info #1″ field in Apple Remote Desktop 3 (ARD) to store the physical location of each machine on my network.  This helps me quickly identify a machine when I’m looking at a list of several hundred Macs.  Currently, I enter this information manually on each computer when they’re re-imaged over the summer.  I’m always looking for ways to do reduce the number of steps in my imaging process, so I’ve been trying to find a terminal command that I can use to push out this setting to multiple machines at once through ARD.

After much searching, I found my answer:

/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -configure -computerinfo -set1 -1 your info goes here

Use ARD’s ‘Send UNIX Command’ feature and send this to the machine(s) you wish to update.  Enter the information you’d like in place of your info goes here. If you’d like to enter a space between words, use a backslash and a space like this: First\ Word

ARD allows you up to 4 fields of computer info, so just follow the convention for those as well (-set2 -2, -set3 -3, etc).  I’ve tested this with OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 with success.  It was unsuccessful on a machine running OS X Server 10.3 (an old eMac running as a CD-ROM server, serving up disk images).  To find out more command line options for setting up and configuring Apple Remote Desktop, enter the following command in a terminal window (you’ll be asked to authenticate as an administrator):

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -help

Even though doing this manually only takes a few seconds, it certainly adds up when you have to do it a few hundred times.  I can also now do this at the time of imaging, or any time without having to control the remote screen through the GUI.  I may eventually automate this and incorporate it into a post-flight script as part of my imaging workflow.  If I do, I’ll be sure to post the script.

How To: Run Lego Education’s WeDo software on OS X 10.4.11

I realize the topic of this post may be a bit specialized, but I would surely have liked to had something like this as a guide when I recently had to overcome this challenge.

Most of our entire campus is still running OS X 10.4.11, for the sole reason that login times for a .local Active Directory domain STILL take 2-3 minutes (as of 10.5.6).  Our Lower School purchased some Lego robotics kits which came with new software called WeDo.  The minimum requirements are OS X 10.5, and the installer will not run on OS X 10.4.

To get around this, I did the following: Read more…

Another Way to Kill Dashboard at Login for Managed Users

I love Dashboard, I have several widgets I can’t live without.  Most of my users however, don’t even know what it is.  I also love the Mighty Mouse but again, most of my users don’t understand how it works.

I’ve tried managing the mouse preferences to prevent Dashboard from opening when users click the scroll ball, but I can’t seem to get it to work for the life of me.  The same applies to disabling the Dashboard application and all accompanying applications through Workgroup Manager.

I came across DashOff, an application for enabling and disabling Dashboard, but it requires user interaction and I want this to be automated.  I finally gave up and decided to create an Applescript application called KillDash to run at login, to issue a “defaults write” command to disable dashboard.

Read more…