[MacTUG] Managed software for Macs.

[Guillermo Fuentes]

Hi Don,

You're right, Munki consists of a client (munkitools) installed on the managed Mac which pulls package installs an updates from a repository hosted on any web server. It can also be configured to manage OS updates.

The pull model allows to configure the software packages with its dependencies and updates, make them available to the clients via the repository, and Munki does the rest. Deploying a lab will still be using DeployStudio but the only package it will install is the munkitools along with the configuration for the specific Mac (or group of Macs). After that, Munki makes sure the Mac has the assigned packages installed and up to date.

A package update comes up? Import it to the test catalog on the repo. After making sure test was OK on the designated test machines, make it available on the production catalog and wait for the production Macs to get it (randomly, by default, in a time span of 2 hours).

With ARD you manually push the set of packages a Mac gets and its updates. With Munki that's automatic after you install the munkitools and properly configure it to "talk" to the repository.

If you want to learn about or get started with Munki this presentation by Greg Neagle<http://documentation.macsysadmin.se/2011/iPhone/Pushing_Packages_with_Munki-iPhone.m4v> is worth watching:
http://documentation.macsysadmin.se/2011/iPhone/Pushing_Packages_with_Munki-iPhone.m4v

Although it isn't much just yet, I'm willing to share what I've done and learned so far.

Have a great weekend,

Guillermo

On 2012-05-04, at 3:13 PM, Donald Duff-McCracken wrote:

That is cool Guillermo. I would like to see it sometime. Quickly reading it I am not sure what it can do that ARD cannot do, although it sounds like it pulls the updates versus having ARD push them out, is that right?

don


From: Guillermo Fuentes <gfuentes at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:gfuentes at uwaterloo.ca>>
Date: Wednesday, 2 May, 2012 11:21 AM
To: MacTUG <mactug at mailman.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:mactug at mailman.uwaterloo.ca>>
Subject: [MacTUG] Managed software for Macs.

Hi all,

One of the things I wanted to find out about at the Apple Connect training camp was what people were using for managing software on Mac OS X. It turned out there is an open source project called Munki (http://code.google.com/p/munki/) that's used by several companies, including Walt Disney Animation Studios (where the lead developer works as Senior Systems Engineer), Google, and several universities around the world.
After testing Munki with a few packages on a few Macs I can now confirm is working great for us. I'm managing the following packages on our lab machines and I'm working on moving all packages I can to Munki:

  *   Firefox
  *   Google Chrome
  *   MS Office 2011

I've tested it on Mac OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.8 and 10.7.3.

Were you looking at a similar solution?

Guillermo






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