Configurator - supervised devices and switching computers

You can use Configurator to at least save your mobile profiles. The default save directory is in your iTunes library where your apps are downloaded (/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/, if I recall correctly), but you should also be able to save them elsewhere. As for the supervision profile certificate, I'm not sure if that can be exported, maybe someone from Apple can chime in there.

In addition to backing up the iOS apps, there are other files, too.

See this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5194

or read this:

Note: If you use third-party backup software, make sure that the directory ~/Library/Application Support is not excluded from the backup.
To recover your Apple Configurator data from a Time Machine backup:

1. Choose Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu extra or System Preference pane.
2. Press Command-Shift-G and type: ~/Library/Application Support
3. Select the item "com.apple.configurator" in the backup with the appropriate date.
4. Click Restore.

If you are using third-party backup software, follow its instructions to restore ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.configurator.
You may also want to recover the following information from the backup of the same date:

• ~/Library/Keychains, to recover the Supervision Certificate and public and private keys. These will allow supervised devices to reconnect to the host computer.
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.configurator.plist, to restore Configurator settings and preferences.

Restoring data to a new Mac

If you restore the files and folders listed above to a new Mac, you can use it to manage devices supervised by the previous Apple Configurator Mac.

Additional Information

If you have supervised devices with Apple Configurator and you lose the Apple Configurator data files, the devices will still be supervised by the Mac that is running Configurator, but Apple Configurator will not be able to reinstall app backups or user data onto those supervised devices.

It is especially important to back up Apple Configurator information if you are using VPP codes. After a VPP code has been redeemed, only the Apple Configurator database keeps a record of what device that code was redeemed for. If this database is lost, and the app is deleted from the device, Apple Configurator will not be able to reuse the redeemed code in order to install the app, and you will need to purchase and redeem additional codes to replace the app on a device.

~

I make sure my iPad configurator machine has regular TimeMachine backups. A 500GB USB2 drive is enough to handle the initial startup disk backup & incrementals afterwards. It is important to have a dedicated machine for profile tasks, too. An Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or greater Mac Mini should suffice and is quite inexpensive.

Does anyone know how to move your configurator settings and files from one account on a mac to another? I tried using the directions in this post but when I go to application support I can't find the folder for com.apple.configurator. Any ideas where that might be or if there is a new way since this post was closed? I'm running 10.8.3

are you looking inside the users library or systems library? because the container files you need are inside the users library, you probably cant find it because the users library is originally hidden in Lion and up.

What you can do is either go to the Finder and select Go to folder.. and type in ~/Library/ and press enter, or open up your terminal and type in chflags nohidden ~/Library/ and press enter, this should show the folder under your user now.

My organization transferred responsibility of iPad management from me to another staff member. I had been managing the iPads with apple configurator using my primary desktop, so we needed to transfer "owernship" to another machine, but I didn't want to tranfer everything. Here is what we ended up doing:

make a copy of com.apple.configurator from MachineA ~/Library/Application Support/

export Apple Configurator certificate AND private key from Keychain Access

move to MachineB

use Keychain Access to import both the certificate AND the key into the new machine

copy com.apple.configurator to ~/Library/Containers/ on MachineB (we initially tried putting the files in ~/Library/Application Support, but for some reason Configurator was looking for them under the other folder on Machine B).

We also made a copy of all the application ipa's from the "iTunes Media" folder so that we didn't have to redownload the install files for each app.

Perhaps what you want to be doing is getting an external hd. Configure a user with the home folder on the external hd. Use this user for all ipad configurations. At least it will be easy to move the data. You will have to mess around with getting the new user on the new machine to use the external folder for their home folder.

sjamieson - i followed your instructions and I am still getting an "Unable to attach device to Apple Configurator" error. Did you have to do anything with the files in /var/db/lockdown? I have found some answers that suggest that.

Thanks in advance.

Hello, sjamieson-tip

I too followed this.

Do I need to do anything with the /var/db/lockdown folder??

Does anyone know if this method will work for Configurator 2?