Apple remote desktop in a school environment.

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Level 1

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Apple remote desktop in a school environment.

Hi, I am a school IT administrator currently managing 300+ MacBooks without any management softare. I just purchased apple remote desktop and was wondering if there's a way to give students limited permissions in regards to turning the remote management option off and on, while still allowing them to do various tasks that they have to do on a normal basis, like installing applications and changing WiFi settings. I have the option to wipe every computer and start fresh with a mountain lion image. The imaging software we use isn't apple based, but can install packages (which is what I was looking at, a client installer package). I would much rather not imaging though.

Thanks for any input you have, Liam.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 22, 2012 8:24 PM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Aug 23, 2012 7:23 AM in response to ShiningTitan

Sorry, but if they have the administrator privileges necessary to install most software and make other settings changes, there's no way to prevent them from turning off ARD. In earlier versions of Mac OS X, it was possible to create users with limited admin privileges, but that seems to be no longer possible since Apple dropped NetInfo.

Regards.

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Answer 2

iToaster

Level 3

739 points

Aug 23, 2012 4:54 PM in response to ShiningTitan

I would not allow users to install stuff on organization owned equipment or change wireless, or fiddle with remote management settings, it's not theirs to fiddle with. You're in for a world of pain going in that direction imo.

if it was a BYOD environment that would be a different matter and you should not be responsible for users equipment.

have you thought about 2 copies of ARD one to act as task server

and OXS server to manage the clients, OSX server is a cheap investment

for all the features it includes, although it's worry the way Apple is removing things

none of my users have admin privileges all applications are tested, approved and installed by IT

and are managed by OSX server and ARD, so hopefull I know what;s going on on my network 🙂

Generally if you allow it, it will get abused somewhere either deliberatly or acidently and you'll be either spending time finding out what's been happening

or spending time fixing it, time that could be better spent elsewhere

I would say unmanaged clients with admin privileged users would be much more time consuming looking after it tthen deploying managed clients with standard privileged users

in a managed system staff can pick up a macbook and know it's going to work

in an unmangined system staff pick up a macbook and wonder if it's going to work

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Answer 3

ShiningTitan Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2012 7:33 PM in response to ShiningTitan

Sorry for the late replies. I've ended up resetting users passwords and installing ARD. I have set a .mobileconfig file off of apple server to limit the use of the "users & groups" prefpane and the "Sharing" prefpane, so they cannot disable remote management. I can check if the authentication has failed if they've used passwd to delete the user.

Thanks for the help 🙂

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