[MacTUG] a deploy studio question

[Donald Duff-McCracken]

OK, i think deploystudio is great and it has certainly simplified and shortened the lab rebuild process.

We rebuild our labs fairly frequently, sometimes every term. I will skip a summer now and then if I am not getting new software or new machines, and just manually update the OS and such. Frankly, however, the rebuild process is now so simple that pushing out updates etc on an old build does not save that much time.

HOWEVER, one thing I would like is to be able to do a rebuild mid-term without anyone noticing. This would be particularly nice during December as the time period between rebuilds it tight — I usually wait till exams are well under way before rebuilding and that makes for a busy second half of december.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO: I would like to use deploystudio to image a file leaving the users (and all the UIDS etc intact). That way I could rebuild a machine at night, have the user come in and find their account and their files (I am allowing users to store documents locally on their local account) in place, with the only changes that software had been updated (firefox 8.6.5.5.4, anyone? Haha).

Is there some way that this can be done simply, that I have missed? I am wondering if you folks that are using deploystudio for the rollover projects have experienced this.

don
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Donald Duff-McCracken
Technical Services Manager
Mapping, Analysis & Design
Faculty of Environment
University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 x32151
http://www.environment.uwaterloo.ca/computing/people/don.html
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