Installation manual

Chapter 1 Using Apple Remote Desktop 19
Using NetBoot Images
Another kind of system image you can create using Mac OS X Server is a NetBoot
image. As with a NetInstall image, a client computer uses a NetBoot image to start up.
However, the startup software isn’t installed on the client system. Instead, it resides
on a remote server. You should use a NetBoot image that has Apple Remote Desktop
installed and congured. Otherwise, administering the computer using Apple Remote
Desktop after starting up from NetBoot is impossible.
Client computers that boot from a NetBoot image get a fresh system environment
every time they start up. For this reason, using NetBoot images is useful when
a particular computer is shared by several users who require dierent work
environments or refreshed work environments, or when you want to start a new
experiment or use a dierent computing environment in a cluster node.
You can use Apple Remote Desktop to set the startup disks of client systems to point
to the NetBoot image, and then restart the systems remotely using Apple Remote
Desktop. Users can also choose a NetBoot image for startup by using the Startup
Disk pane of System Preferences. With just a few clicks you can recongure all the
computers in a lab or cluster without having to manually restart and congure each
computer individually.
Distributing Preference Files
Managed computers often require a standard set of preferences for their applications.
Use Apple Remote Desktop to distribute preference les when you need to replace or
update application preferences. For example, you can copy a standardized preference
le to the currently logged in user’s Library/Preferences/ folder.
Using UNIX Shell Scripts
You can use Apple Remote Desktop to distribute and run UNIX shell scripts on client
computers.
For example, a script can mount an AFP server volume, from which it downloads a disk
image to client computers. The script might also download an installer package and
then perform a command-line installation.
On an Xserve in a cluster node, you could also run a script that mounts a RAID volume
designed for high throughput and then downloads large data sets for processing.
You can also use Apple Remote Desktop to distribute AppleScript les that automate
PDF workows, or job instructions for computational clusters.
Distributing Drag-and-Drop Applications
You can distribute and install self-contained (drag-and-drop) applications by copying
them to one or more client computers.