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Deploying Mac OS X in Clusters

Introduction

At Carnegie Mellon, the undergraduate student computing labs are referred to as "clusters". The original goal of this project was to transition our Macintosh clusters from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. Having succeeded in that goal, we have moved forward with efforts to upgrade Mac OS X in the public clusters, provide assistance to Carnegie Mellon departments looking to deploy their own Mac OS X labs, and facilitate more seamless integration of Mac OS X based labs with other computing environments across campus.

In the summer of 2002, we upgraded most clusters to Mac OS X 10.1.4. In the summer of 2003, we moved all labs to Mac OS X 10.2, including the specialized multimedia rooms that were not upgraded last summer. In the summer of 2004 we are upgrading all public labs to Mac OS X 10.3.

This web site was created to organize the efforts of the project team but other lab administrators may find our notes useful. Most of the information is found in the list of documents to the right and in the Milestones schedule below.

Questions or comments on this site can be e-mailed to: jackson@cmu.edu

Documents

• Clusters Quick Setup Instructions for Leopard
  Brief instructions for CMU Dept Admins wanting to setup a cluster Mac.
• Clusters Quick Setup Instructions for Tiger
  Brief instructions for CMU Dept Admins wanting to setup a cluster Mac.
• Overview
  A high-level introduction to the project
• Deployment Plans
  A general description of how we plan to deploy Mac OS X in clusters
• Open Questions
  The issues that still need to be investigated and decided
• Install Process
  A detailed record of all changes made to the prototype system before imaging
• Older Deployments
  • 10.1 Questions
    An archive of questions from 2002 with comments on how they were resolved
  • 10.1 Deployment Plans
    An archive of our 10.1 deployment plans from 2002
  • 10.2 Questions
    An archive of questions from 2003 with comments on how they were resolved
  • 10.2 Deployment Plans
    An archive of our 10.2 deployment plans from 2003
  • 10.3 Departmental Quick Setup
    Instructions for configuring Panther clients to leverage LDAP, AFS, and the "roaming profiles" used in public clusters

Seminar Presentations

On April 1, 2003, we hosted a seminar with Apple titled "Integrating Mac OS X on Campus". We described our lab setup in three presentations. A handout on the Mac OS X Lab Deployment Project was also available. The links below link to the slides in PDF format:

• Integration with our Infrastructure: LDAP, Kerberos, and OpenAFS
• File System Maintenance
• Application Deployment
• Flyer for macosxlabs.org project

Links and Downloads

• The Higher Ed Mac OS X Lab Deployment Initiative A great place to learn more about transitioning to Mac OS X in a lab
• Cluster Services Info on our the labs maintained by Computing Services