Casper Composer - Snapshots

[khurram]

Where should we make the OS Packages or software packages using Composer. Should we have a separate mac other than the server. Why would we use Composer Snapshot feature. Do we differentiate the files on this separate mac or the server. I need to clearly understand that what kind of snapshots are we taking using Composer. My understanding is that once we have build these packages and deployed them on user's machine these packages (on our server) remain unchanged while the packages on the user's machine will be changed (like preference settings) so are we using these snapshots from user's machine and comparing with our original snapshot and deploying it back again on user's machine in order to avoid any changed to user's files like preferences.

[calum_rmit]

I use a separate machine that has our SOE/MOE on it to create my composer packages, or i use a VM with our SOE/MOE on it. depends where i am and what i'm doing, sometimes the VM doesn't work for the package i'm creating.

the composer snap shot feature is documented on page 130 of the Admin guide
http://resources.jamfsoftware.com/documents/products/documentation/Casper-Suite-9.31-Administrators-Guide.pdf

Basically you use this to create a snapshot of your filesystem on your machine that you are installing your software. then once the snapshot has been created you go ahead and make your changes, ie install your software, then you finish or create a second snapshot of your filesystem. composer then compares the two and finds all the new/modified files - this then allows you to see what files and where they were installed by your software install you can then build a package from this.

Hope this helps