Maintenance

1) Install Leopard to an external drive
2) Reboot to external Leopard
3) Format internal HDD so that it contains one 30GB Windows partition and a Mac OS partition which takes up the rest of the drive. Make sure that the Windows partition is last. Use Disk Utility for this, or use the command line utility diskutil (instructions are elsewhere in this blog).
3) Using NetRestore, clone the Leopard_clean.dmg image to the Mac OS partition. Leopard_clean.dmg is an image I created from a clean Leopard install using NetRestore Helper.
4) Using WinClone, clone the XPclean.winclone inage to the Windows partition.
5) Reboot in to Mac OS (internal) and install BootPicker. If adjusting its settings do not work, run the following commands in Terminal, one after the other:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker windowsPartition "/dev/disk0s3"
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker userChoosesBootOS -bool TRUE
The first one tells BootPicker where to find Windows and the second one sets permission for the user to choose their OS.
*** If you would like to exclude an option from the list (like you don't have Linux installed, so you want to remove the Linux choice from the boot splash), do this:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker linuxPartition -bool FALSE
6) Boot in to Windows - My experience so far is that there will be a disk check required on first boot. I assume this is because of the mismatch between the initial formatting done in step #3 (FAT32) and the internal formatting of the XPclean.winclone image (NTFS).

That should be it, at least on a basic level. Things to consider:
Windows can't read HFS+ dives, so data created in Mac OS is not accessible to the Windows machine. Installing VMware or Parallels and running Windows as a VM will resolve this.
Although Mac OS can mount the NTFS partition Windows lives on it will not be writable, even if you have installed NTFS tools (a binary from http://www.bombich.com or http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ ). This is because the initial mount command run from /etc/rc calls the internal, RO filesystem driver. I believe there is a way around this, but I won't be implementing it on lab machines.

Bootpicker on Leopard seems to be more of a command-line app than GUI. The GUI allows you to make changes, but they are frequently ignored. All functions seem to be exposed for CLI use, though. Until it is totally Leopard compatible, here's the included documentation (only available from within the application).

Introduction
With the advent of Boot Camp comes the possibility of deploying dual-boot Macs and permitting your end users to choose whichever platform will work best for whatever they'd like to do at the moment. But how do you manage the presentation of this choice? There are a couple concerns to keep in mind:

1) Setting the boot device is an activity restricted to administrative users.
2) Allowing non-administrative users access to this functionality potentially allows them to set the boot device to some external media that they provide (then they can really rape the system).
3) Leaving the machine at the EFI boot picker (hold down the option key at startup), while possible, leaves the previous options open and also leaves the machine in a state in which it cannot be managed or accessed via the network. rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net) allows you to lock down the boot options at startup, however you're still unable to actually manage the machine in this state.

Before developing BootPicker, I came up with a list of requirements that I would insist upon were I to manage a lab of dual-boot Macs:

1) Must work when a firmware password is applied to the machine
2) The boot picker can not interfere with remote administration (e.g. via ARD)
3) The boot picker must allow the administrator to specify explicitly what drives are permitted as boot devices
4) The administrator can disable (remotely) the boot picker at any time
5) When the machine is rebooted, it will always boot to Mac OS X by default and present the boot picker
6) Optionally, the boot picker preferences can be managed via directory services (permits management at scale)
7) Optionally, the boot picker should allow the administrator to provide some guidance to the end user about why they should choose one OS over another

BootPicker satisfies all of these requirements. BootPicker runs on startup immediately prior to LoginWindow. Based upon your configuration, it presents an option to the end user to choose an operating system. Upon choosing that OS, the machine either continues to Mac OS X or reboots to the specified OS. The next time the computer is rebooted, it automatically returns to Mac OS X and the boot picker. Finally, for environments that require management at a large scale, or management while the machines are turned off or booted to a different OS, BootPicker can be managed via a Mac OS X Server Open Directory Master. Got AD? That's OK, you can leverage that as well (see http://www.bombich.com/mactips/activedir.html).

Graphical User Interface Configuration
BootPicker can be configured using the BootPicker preference Pane. At minimum, you must indicate the partition containing your Windows or Linux installation.

Command-Line Configuration
BootPicker can be configured locally at each client via a plist preference file or from Workgroup Manager on your Mac OS X Server Directory Service (see http://www.bombich.com/mactips/activedir.html for information on Leveraging Mac OS X Server in an Active Directory environment). Because BootPicker runs before any user is allowed to log in, you must apply BootPicker preferences to a machine group.

Configure BootPicker settings on a particular machine:
At a small scale, BootPicker settings can be applied using the defaults command. At minimum, you must provide the name or device ID of your Windows or Linux partition as well as the "userChoosesBootOS" setting. If a Windows or Linux partition is not specified, BootPicker will exit immediately to the Mac OS X loginwindow.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker windowsPartition "Windows XP"

or

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker windowsPartition "/dev/disk0s3"

To specify the device node of a Linux partition:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker linuxPartition "/dev/disk0s5"

Note that the Windows volume can be specified by name or device node. The Linux volume can only be indicated by device node because it does not generally mount under Mac OS X.

Other preference keys:

(BOOL)userChoosesBootOS
(string)windowsPartition
(string)linuxPartition
(string)defaultBootOS
(string)mosxJustification
(string)winJustification
(string)linJustification
(string)bgPath
(string)title

To indicate that the user is NOT permitted to choose the boot OS (suppose you want to force booting to Windows or temporarily remove the choice):

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker userChoosesBootOS -bool FALSE
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker defaultBootOS "Windows"

[Note: To get back to Mac OS X after running the second command, you will need to boot into Single-User mode to delete the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker.plist file. For a more scalable approach, refer to the "Configure BootPicker settings in Workgroup Manager" section below.]

By default, the additional text below each operating system choice ("justification text") is not present. To make text appear, run the following defaults commands:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker mosxJustification "Mac rules"
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker winJustification "PC drools"
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker linJustification "Um, Linux"

The OS choice buttons and justification text will be spaced proportionately within the window.

To specify the title of the BootPicker window:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker title "Welcome to Macintosh"

To specify the background picture:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker bgPath "/path/to/image.jpg"

Any image file type supported by the Preview application should work as a background image.

Each command listed above can also be applied using Apple Remote Desktop's Send Unix command. Alternatively, you can make the changes to your local copy of the preference file, then push the file out to your client machines.

Configure BootPicker settings in Workgroup Manager

For centralized management of BootPicker's settings, as well as management control while machines are not booted into Mac OS X, leveraging Apple's Open Directory infrastructure is the way to go. To avoid conflicts with local preference files, be sure to delete the BootPicker preferences stored at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker.plist on your client machine(s).

1. Launch the Workgroup Manager application in /Applications/Server and log in to your server. You may perform this step at your server or at a remote administration machine.

2. Click on the Machine tab and select a machine group (you may need to create a group first).

3. Click on the “Preferences” button in the toolbar, then click on the "Details" tab.

4. Click on the “Add...” button. Navigate to /Applications/Utilities and choose BootPicker (you may want to copy this to your server rather than installing BootPicker on your server). Click the Add button.

5. Click on the BootPicker item identified by “com.apple.education.bootpicker” and click on the Edit button.

6. Click on the “Always” item and click its disclosure triangle to enable the “New Key” button. Add a new Key.

7. Next to the “New Item” entry is a pop-up button. Click on the arrows to reveal all the preference attributes available within the manifest

8. Choose “Windows Partition Name”. Change the value to the name of your Windows partition.

9. Repeat for each preference key that you wish to set.

Configuring Windows to reboot on logout

Fundamental to the utility of BootPicker is getting a machine to always return to the BootPicker screen when a user is finished using Mac OS X or Windows. Many labs maintain a policy that users must log off of the computer before leaving to protect their data and identity. By enforcing this type of policy, lab managers can leverage this opportunity to reboot Windows to Mac OS X.

To reboot Windows at log off time, do the following:

1. Create a plain text file named "logoff-restart.cmd" with the contents "shutdown -r -f -t 0". Save it to the Desktop (for now).
2. Choose "Run" from the Start menu, type "gpedit.msc" and hit return.
3. Navigate to User Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts
4. Double-click on the "Logoff" item in the pane on the right.
5. Click the "Add..." button, then click the "Browse" button.
6. Drag the logoff-restart.cmd file into the Browse window. That should copy the file to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Group Policy\User\Scripts\Logoff.
7. Select the logoff-restart file in the browse window and click "Open". Click "OK" to dismiss the "Add a script" window.
8. Click "Apply", then click "OK". Log off to test that the script applied.

Configuring a Macintosh to "Triple Boot" -- Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux

See http://www.twocanoes.com for more information.

Uninstalling BootPicker

To uninstall BootPicker, simply click the "Uninstall BootPicker" button in the BootPicker Preference Pane's Uninstall tab.

How BootPicker "works"

BootPicker is actually an incredibly simple application. By running immediately before the loginwindow process loads, and after the rest of Mac OS X has loaded, BootPicker has the ability to set the boot disk prior to any user is allowed to log in to the machine. To boot into Mac OS X, BootPicker simply exits and allows loginwindow to load. To boot into Windows or Linux, it simply runs the "bless" command with syntax along these lines:

/usr/sbin/bless --device /dev/<devNode> --setBoot --legacy --nextonly

It is important to understand the implication of this simplicity. BootPicker does not participate in the setup required to actually make a Macintosh boot to any particular operating system. In fact, BootPicker doesn't concern itself with the contents of your volumes at all. Consequently, you are responsible for setting up your Mac in such a way that it can boot to your additional partitions given BootPicker's usage of the bless command.

Security Notice

Setting the boot volume of a Mac is an operation that requires administrator privileges. Rather than opening an environment for non-admin users to execute whatever administrative functions they'd like, BootPicker provides a very limited amount of functionality -- it will set the boot disk to one of a set of volumes that you as the system administrator permit. To provide this level of functionality to non-administrative users in a controlled manner, BootPicker runs before loginwindow runs -- before a user is permitted to log in to the machine at all. As such, BootPicker must run as the System Administrator (root) -- only the root user is allowed to connect to the WindowServer prior to login. In general, it is a bad idea to run GUI applications as the root user.

Problems getting a 4-partition, 3OS machine set up.
Because Bootcamp will only create 2 partitions it isn't simple to build a triple-booter in the approved manner.
Formatting the drive as 4 partitions (using GUID map) leaves Windows unbootable, but adding an MBR meant that Mac OS didn't show up in the Startup disk pref pane. As a result, I was not able to make Bootpicker work the way I had hoped: the machine would either only boot in to Windows (or Linux, depending on GRUB) or I'd get a blue screen when I tried to boot in to Windows (using the keyboard to choose OS on boot). Adjusting GRUB or boot.ini works, but is not elegant.
The solution (found here: http://www.twocanoes.com/forums ) is to set the LAST partition on the disk to be Windows. Apparently the Intel Macs won't recognize the bootability of Windows unless it's last on the list. Also, when cloning the new Windows install to another machine, the new machine needs to be partitioned in the same way:
e.g.
partition 1: Storage
partition 2: Mac OS
partition 3: Linux
partition 4: Windows
or boot.ini will need to be adjusted to point to the right partition.

So, what I'm doing right now:
1: boot from external Leopard
2: Format drive as above (4 partitions with Windows last)
3: Use NetRestore to build Mac OS partition from Leopard_clean.dmg on external drive
4: Boot to Windows install disk and install Windows (make sure to format partition as NTFS)
5: Boot in to Windows and install Windows drivers from Leopard disk.
6: Boot in to Leopard and install/configure Bootpicker
6b: If it is a dual-booter (no Linux), run this command in OS X to disable the Linux choice in Bootpicker:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.education.bootpicker linuxPartition -bool FALSE

UPDATE: 4 partitions won't work. MBR only supports 4 primary partitions and GPT does not support extended partitions. Combining these two limitations means that a dual partition system disk can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions. In addition, Apple reserves the first primary partition for the "EFI System Partition". That leaves us with only three partitions to play with, one for each OS.
(from http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp )
So, I'm going with 2 partitions (in the case of the labs, no Linux). 30GB for Windows, at the end of the disk and the rest for Mac OS.

Useful disk commands:
sudo diskutil mergePartitions "Journaled HFS+" "Mac OS" disk0s2 disk0s3
which will merge partitions 2 & 3 using journaled hfs+ and name the resulting partition Mac OS.
and
sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 60G "Linux" "Linux" 17G "MS-DOS FAT32" "Windows" 15G
which will resize disk0s2 (the main partition volume) to 60GB and create a 17GB volume called Linux with linux formatting and a 15GB FAT32 volume called Windows.

IN response to a question from the English department, I've figured out how to get Fetch to show system files. In Fetch 4 for Mac OS X, by default the GUI does not show any files that begin with the . character, for example .htaccess. To make those files appear: - Choose Fetch - Preferences - Select the Misc tab - Click the Obscure Options button - In the list that appears, check "Send list -al to Unix" - Save changes - Restart Fetch. This change also causes the . and .. folder items to become visible.

Called into Lab C at the end of the day by an instructor trying to use Praat; it wouldn't run because of a permissions problem. Checked the permissions on the executable, and only administrators had any, so I added UVic Domain Users, and then it would run for her.

Checked Lab B, and found the same situation there, so I fixed that too.

This took quite a while to fix because you can't log off either of these machines; you have to restart every time. I wonder if there's a way around that?

There is an app called AdjustDuo.exe in the install bundle which kind-of almost does an OK job, but so far I have had to hack duo.cfg on every chipset we've had.

Here's how:
1. Start Media Assistant (Duo) so that a temp.cfg file gets created.

2. Close Duo.

3. Rename Duo.exe to Duo.xxx to prevent it starting.

4. Open two instances of the Windows sound mixer; one for volume and one for recording. Make sure that all necessary volume/record controls are visible.
a) Start a program source in Lab 300 teacher's station and press the manual button.

b) Adjust playback line-in and main volumes on student station using the Windows mixer.

c) Select record line-in from the mixer and record the program with the Windows Sound

Recorder. Then mute the playback line-in and play the recording back and adjust

record line-in.

d) Stop program transfer by pressing the manual button.

5. Adjust playback mic sidetone level by speaking and listening your own voice.

6. Start a wav file with mediaplayer and adjust playback waveout.

7. Start a rmi file with mediaplayer and adjust playback midi.

8. Start a CD track and adjust playback CD audio.

9. Start Sound Recorder, record your speaking, play it back and adjust record mic accordingly.

10. Rename Media Assistant back to Duo.exe and launch it.

11. Rename temp.cfg to duo.cfg.

12. You can use this same file in Lab 300\Master folder by renaming it as Lab300.cfg

Further hacking can be done using the following guide:
The various sections of the duo.cfg file can be manually configured. Numeric values range from 0 - 65535. Duo must be shut down when editing this file.

[RECORD VOLUME] *Note that these are recording volumes. It is possible to have playback too loud during transfer, but too quiet when replayed from local disk.
LINEIN=5000 *sets the recording level for incoming audio.
MIC=50000 *sets the recording level for student generated files.

[PLAY VOLUME]
LINEIN=15000 *adjusts volume levels for incoming transfers (such as tapes and audio CDs)
MIC=5000 *adjusts student microphone sidetone volume when the student is in control
CD=26025 *adjusts volume of CDs played on the student station
MAIN=21000 *adjusts all volumes simultaneously.
WAVEOUT=20000 *sets volume of media files played back on the student station

Sanako Duo
Real Player
Quick Time
VideoLAN (VLC): http://videolan.org/
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Praat: http://praat.org/

Paint.NET: http://getpaint.net/
Image Markup Tool: http://www.tapor.uvic.ca/~mholmes/image_markup/

OpenOffice.org: http://openoffice.org/
jEdit: http://jedit.org
Concordance: http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/
Powerpoint viewer 2007
Acrobat Reader

Filezilla: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net
Firefox: http://mozilla.com
Nvu/KompoZer: http://nvu.com/http://kompozer.net

Deutsch Na Klar

7-zip: http://7-zip.org
PDFCreator: http://pdfforge.org - set up as default printer
Antivirus (currently CA AntiVirus)

Language support currently installed:
Language Location Keyboard/IME

Arabic U.A.E Arabic 101
Chinese Hong Kong S.A.R. Chinese Traditional US Keyboard
Chinese PRC Chinese Simplified Pinyin IME 3
Chinese Taiwan MS New Phonetic IME 2002a
Dutch Netherlands Dutch
English Canada US
English US US-International
Farsi Farsi
French Canada Canadian Multilingual Standard
French France French
German Germany German
Greek Greek
Hebrew Hebrew
Icelandic Icelandic
Indonesian US
Italian Italy Italian
Japanese Microsoft Office IME 2007
Korean Korean
Microsoft Office IME 2007
Norwegian Nynorsk Norwegian
Portuguese Brazil Portuguese (Brazilian ABNT)
Punjabi Punjabi
Russian Russina
Spanish Traditional Sort Spanish
Swedish Swedish
Thai Thai Kedmanee
Turkish Turkish Q
Vietnamese Vietnamese

New MS Office saves stuff in XML format (.docx etc.) and OOo is unable to open the files without some help. I have successfully installed helper apps on Ubuntu to open these files (only tried a simple docx file so far); I'll explain how below.

Novell has released OOo extensions for this purpose. Here's the copy from this page:

The OpenXML Translator provides support for opening and saving Microsoft* OpenXML-formatted word processing documents (.docx) in OpenOffice.org.

The odfconverter-1.0.0-2.oxt file works only with Windows, and the odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm file works only on SUSE® Linux Enterprise, SUSE Linux, and openSUSE. On both platforms, the OpenXML Translator works only with the latest Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org.

Using alien on Ubuntu I installed the rpm thusly:
$ sudo alien -ct odfconverter<version>.rpm
which results in a tgz bundle. Unroll it and enter the directory.
Then:

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/

**note that I stole these instructions from here.

I will try this on a lab machine for the next build. The difference is that Novell has a Windows-only package that can be installed from within OOo's package manager.

Stew and I were both thrown for a while by a teacher's request for help playing a DVD in lab B. When you first put the DVD in, you get an error message to the effect that the device is not available, or not ready. Attempts to play the DVD itself with Windows Media Player failed -- according to our experiments afterwards in Lab C, WMP is unaware of DVDs, and has no menu or toolbar items relating to DVDs, and while a DVD is in the drive, it shows No Disc In Drive. In Lab B, I tried inserting the DVD when logged on as admin, and as a regular user; there was no difference -- I still got the error message.

In Lab C, the default DVD player is RealPlayer, which doesn't have the codecs to play the DVD; it offers to download them and install them, but fails.

Eventually, we figured out that you can right-click on the DVD drive and choose Play with VLC. That works fine for the video. Then you have to start the Sanako teacher's console, choose Media File, and switch on the Speakers icon to get audio through the speakers.

I've written up some instructions for both labs to cover the time when Greg's away, then after he gets back we can figure out the RealPlayer problem in Lab C, and see if either station can be made to pop up a player that works automatically. The instructions are below; I've also passed them to the CALL guys, and put copies in the labs.

Also logging the fact that the teacher station in Lab B refused to log off; I had to restart it. This was when logged on as administrator. Finally, I should mention that when the DVD was playing in lab B, the instructor also noticed that it was a bit jittery, and it seems that way to me too. I don't know if that's because of the hardware or the VLC player.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Playing DVD Movies in the Labs

Playing DVDs is a little complicated at the moment, because of some technical issues we're working on, but it does work if you follow these steps:

1. First, power up the projector and make sure you can see the desktop of the teacher station on the projector screen.
2. Insert the DVD in the teacher station computer.
3. If you see an error message, just click OK. If RealPlayer starts up, and pops up messages, click Cancel on all the messages and close RealPlayer.
4. Double-click on the teacher station on the desktop. You should see the DVD as one of the drives on the computer.
5. Right-click on the DVD and choose "Play with VLC". The VLC media player should start up, and you should see the DVD begin to play. You won't hear any audio yet, though.
6. Start the Sanako teacher's console (from the link on the desktop or the taskbar).
7. Choose Media File as the Source in the console.
8. Click on the Speakers icon (on the toolbar, near the top left). The button should stick down, meaning that the sound is routing through the external speakers. You may need to turn up the speakers using the knob on the teacher's desk.
9. Now go back to the VLC player, which is showing the video. Choose DVD / Fullscreen, to get a fullscreen view of the video.

Just in case there's a machine that needs a jolly good ghosting

You will need:
The BartPE disk, which is labelled "Bart PE Vanilla - for Labs. No GHO"
The rubberised hard drive on top of Casper, the power supply and the USB cable, both of which are to the left of Casper's monitor.

Now do this at your target machine:
Boot your machine with Bart in the DVD drive (which is the master) and the USB drive plugged in before boot (power & USB) . That last bit is important because Bart doesn't seem to hotplug. The boot process takes several minutes because it's creating a Ramdisk and loading Windows XP in to memory.

Bart will ask if you want to configure the network. Don't bother, because it takes too long and you don't need it right now.

Bart's desktop is kind of odd, there's no "Start" button per se, but there's a nasty little gold "Go" button instead. Click on it and go hunting for the Symantec>Ghost32 launcher. It launches the familiar ghost GUI. Hopefully you know your way around it. You'll be rebuilding the disk from an image, which is called fallback_xp or something similar (don't use current_xp - it's a bit buggy). It'll take about 2 minutes to rebuild, but around 90% of the way through it will ask you to find the second part of the image - it's in the same place as the first part. Completion will take about 30 more seconds, after which you can quit Ghost32 and restart the machine (remember to take the disk out!).

You now have a shiny new machine, but you'll need to rename it, put it in the domain, and run regrunner, which is at C:\Program Files\Sanako\Lab\Lab 300\Duo\config\regrunner.exe. This will set up the machine for use in the Sanako lab. To put it in the domain you'll need the username and password.