SMART Notebook, Drivers and SMART (Senteo) Response Packages

We us Smart Board's throughout our entire campus. I have tried to package this product every which way possible and it NEVER works. I gave up calling Jamf because it wasn't any help. For now.. I use ARD or we manually install. If anyone has any ideas on this.. I would be so thankful.

"Wade, Evan C." <ecwade at capousd.org> writes: Has anyone had any positive results using Casper tools for remote installations of SMART Technologies products?

Positive, no. Successful, sorta. Using ARD and Casper Remote + policies.

My district uses SMART Airliners and Senteo classroom response units. The software does not deploy successfully as a DMG built with composer, nor does it deploy correctly if we just add the vendor PKG and MPKG packages to the repository.

I had the same result, no Composer snapshots would work and it seemed to be Smart's drivers. I kept getting kernel extension errors. Jamf Support worked with me awhile on this and couldn't get it work. I have no issues with the dozens of apps and packages I deploy. Only Smart's stuff gives me this much greif. One thing I did note is that updates don't work at all, requiring a complete removal of everything before I could reinstall.

I’ve been desperate to find a fix for this, because the alternative is having to manually install 700MB worth of applications and clipart on hundreds of systems at dozens of schools.

I used Smart's Installer Manager application to bundle NoteBook (along with settings & the licensing key) along with the drivers and any desired gallery settings. It creates a custom PKG which I uploaded into CasperAdmin and push out via a policy or with Casper Remote. The package doesn't want to deploy properly within a configuration snapshot and only installs properly once the machine has been fully imaged and booted. Once the machine is imaged, then I deploy the customized Smart PKG, reboot,
install the latest SmartBoard drivers (Smart's own pkg) and custom gallery settings (team content, etc), and one more reboot.

--missing content--

Gene Anderson
Systems Analyst, ACTC, MCP
Pembina Hills Regional Division No.7
Phone: (780) 674-8535 ext 6860
email: ganderson at phrd.ab.ca

"Passwords are like bubble gum, strongest when fresh, should never be
used by groups and create a sticky mess when left laying around"

-anon

What type of issues exactly are you running into? We are deploying the
Smartboard software throughout our district as well. I've only
encountered a couple quirks that affected only our AD bound users and
Senteo and haven't yet looked into them further. More specific
information would be helpful. What problems exactly are you
encountering when the package lays down? Are the users bound accounts or
local? Are the file permissions being set down correctly? Have you
contacted SMART about the issue? What version of Composer are you
using? How are you installing the package? At image time, with a
policy or with remote?

-Dusty-

Dustin Dorey

Technology Support Cluster Specialist

Independant School District 196

Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools

dustin.dorey at district196.org

651|423|7971

adamshep07 at aol.com writes: We initially had an issue with our AD users and found the problem to be that the "SMART Board Tools.app" and ""SMARTBoardService.app" were not starting. We added this to WGM as login items. We recently thought about setting up launchd item to start these up and adding that to the deployment packing.

I've seen this when using our customized Smart pkg using Smart's Installer Manager. It doesn't seem to install fully when imaging, but installs properly when deployed after the fact. Something in the pkg seems to go awry unless it has a fully functioning OS to install onto.

Gene Anderson
Systems Analyst, ACTC, MCP
Pembina Hills Regional Division No.7
Phone: (780) 674-8535 ext 6860
email: ganderson at phrd.ab.ca

"Passwords are like bubble gum, strongest when fresh, should never be
used by groups and create a sticky mess when left laying around"

-anon

The main problem I have is the notebook software will say "Notebook has encountered and error and needs to be reinstalled"

We initially had an issue with our AD users and found the problem to be that the "SMART Board Tools.app" and ""SMARTBoardService.app" were not starting. We added this to WGM as login items. We recently thought about setting up launchd item to start these up and adding that to the deployment packing.

Cheers

-Adam

Adam Shepard
Creighton School District
Web Developer / System Administrator
[Office 602-381-6000][Cell 602-319-8935]

99% of our teacher Mac systems are laptops with local-only accounts (not bound to OD or AD).

We've tried both Casper Remote and Casper policies for installation. The software loads, but won't run (crashes without any error messages being displayed). I have verified that permissions are correct.

I called SMART, which usually takes them 2-3 weeks to respond, and they suggested that I call JAMF since they only support single installations. In my experience, SMART holds things so close to the chest that you'll never get any details about how their product installs or what it needs to run other than the list of hardware requirements.

From looking at this, I'm wondering if adding a couple of startup items might not solve the issue.

Thank you for your help! :-)

Evan Wade
TIS Support Technician - 949-234-5500
Capistrano Unified School District

"Wade, Evan C." <ecwade at capousd.org> writes: 99% of our teacher Mac systems are laptops with local-only accounts (not bound to OD or AD). We've tried both Casper Remote and Casper policies for installation. The software loads, but won't run (crashes without any error messages being displayed). I have verified that permissions are correct. I called SMART, which usually takes them 2-3 weeks to respond, and they suggested that I call JAMF since they only support single installations. In my experience, SMART holds things so close to the chest that you'll never get any details about how their product installs or what it needs to run other than the list of hardware requirements. From looking at this, I'm wondering if adding a couple of startup items might not solve the issue.

Does your NoteBook package include the app's preference and license file? And do your users have read access to these files? It's located in /Users/Shared/Library/Preferences/com.smarttech.blah

I'm not sure why Smart decided to store their stuff there, since everybody else uses /Library/Preferences for global application and system preferences.

Gene Anderson
Systems Analyst, ACTC, MCP
Pembina Hills Regional Division No.7
Phone: (780) 674-8535 ext 6860
email: ganderson at phrd.ab.ca

"Passwords are like bubble gum, strongest when fresh, should never be
used by groups and create a sticky mess when left laying around"

-anon

Bringing back up the SMART topic, I started digging into our packages
here and in doing so got talking to our Instructional Technology person
who told me that the service pack is due out and has a bunch of changes.
I'm thinking about waiting for that to dig into this any further before
I re-invent the wheel so to speak. I'm hoping that the new service
pack will be more apt to be packaged and deployable at image time.
Anyone have an eta on that service pack from SMART by any chance?

-Dusty-

Dustin Dorey
Technology Support Cluster Specialist
Independant School District 196
Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools
dustin.dorey at district196.org
651|423|7971

--missing content--

much easier for him either.

Gene Anderson
Systems Analyst, ACTC, MCP
Pembina Hills Regional Division No.7
Phone: (780) 674-8535 ext 6860
email: ganderson at phrd.ab.ca

"Passwords are like bubble gum, strongest when fresh, should never be
used by groups and create a sticky mess when left laying around"

-anon

Dusty
We just purchased a few of the SC9 controllers for the multi-touch recognition for the SB 600 series boards. In doing so, I had to install the latest software with SP5. There is a difference in the driver package itself. I will try to package this with Composer and let you know how it deploys.