Minnesota Area Apple Seminars and Casper Users Group - June 24

[John_Wetter]

All,

Pete Markham, the Apple K-12 systems engineer for the Twin Cities has been working with JAMF Software and me to put together a day of seminars that will take place at the Eisenhower Community Center Building of Hopkins Public Schools in Hopkins, MN on Thursday, June 24. The day will be focused around deployment of computers and tasks to help maintain them once out in the field. Some tracks will be for the general Apple community while others will be specifically for JAMF customers and those interested in moving up to JAMF software from some of the other solutions out there. It’ll also be a great time to sit down with a troublesome script or automation and you just want to have someone help you work through it face to face.

This also will serve as the local Casper User group for the Twin Cities area for the summer! Bring your thoughts, ideas, problems, solutions and also hear from JAMF on what’s happening with the Casper Suite!

Please see below for full details! And please be sure to register!

-John

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The day is broken into two parts -- morning sessions and afternoon sessions. You can participate in just the morning sessions, just the afternoon sessions, or both. Between the sessions, we will be providing a lunch for all of the attendees at noon. At 12:30, Tim Wilson, the Chief Technology Officer for the Osseo Area Public Schools will be giving a presentation titled "Taking Back Your Inbox" -- information I know we all need!

Here is how the day will break down.

Morning Sessions
The morning will have three tracks for you to choose from. Track 1, which will be lead by Corey Anderson and Pete Markham from Apple, will be from 9AM to Noon and will be a hands-on seminar on setting up and utilizing Deploy Studio to handle your hardware imaging and deployment tasks. Track 2, which will be lead by an engineer from JAMF Software, will be a hands-on seminar on the Casper Imaging Suite, a fantastic commercial tool for imaging and deployment. This track will also be from 9AM to Noon. Track 3 will be from 10AM to Noon and will be a Casper User Group meeting for those folks who are already using the full Casper Suite or the Casper Imaging Suite.

Note that if you are participating in the Deploy Studio track or the Casper Imaging Suite track, you are required to bring your own equipment, which is detailed on the registration page. You will need to choose which track you are attending at the time you register.

**To register for the morning sessions, please visit this URL: http://edseminars.apple.com/event/2824

Afternoon Sessions
There will be three, 55 minute time slots in the afternoon starting at 1:30PM. The sessions will be spread across four different rooms. You do not have to choose which sessions to participate in until the day of the event. The topics will be:

Intro to the Command Line
This session will go over the basics of using the command line. You’ll start by learning how to use the Terminal application. You’ll also learn the basics of navigating the file system of Mac OS X from the command line along with viewing and changing file permissions. Commands to be learned will be man, ls, chown, chmod, sudo. This session is designed for you to follow along on your own computer.

Intermediate Command Line
This session assumes you have the basic knowledge of the Intro to Command Line session and will build on that knowledge. We will dive deeper into the command and learn about commands such as kill, su, cat, touch, grep, ps, and others. This session is designed for you to follow along on your own computer.

Intro to Scripting
Being able to write even a simple script to accomplish administrative tasks is the key to automating your day-to-day work in managing a fleet of Macintosh computers. This session will go over the basics of writing a script in a shell language called bash. This session assumes you have little to no knowledge or experience in writing your own scripts, but do have some basic knowledge of utilizing the Mac OS X command line via the Terminal application. This session is designed for you to follow along on your own computer.

Intermediate Scripting
This session is for those who have basic knowledge of the Mac OS X Command Line and understand the basics of scripting in the bash shell language. The focus of this session will be to go over more complex scripting commands including things such as looping, variables, and conditional statements. This session is designed for you to follow along on your own computer.

Scripting Workshop
Been thinking about writing a script to automate a task you do to take care of your computers? This is the session for you. Bring your idea and get some focused time to work on writing your script. There is no formal presentation -- just time to work and access to an experienced scripter to help you figure out things if you get stuck. This session will be repeated for all three time slots, so you can feel free to come for one time slot or for all three. We’ll have someone from Apple and from JAMF to help you along your way whether it is for the OS, an application, or something specific to the JAMF binary or Casper Suite.

Intro to launchd
With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.4, a new “master process” was born for Mac OS X. Launchd is responsible for starting almost all processes and is the master scheduler for Mac OS X. Learn how you can bend launchd to your will and get it to schedule events, such as maintenance scripts for your machines. You are encouraged to follow along with your own computer during this session.

Intro to Building Packages
Understanding how to build packages is crucial for being able to use a modular imaging technique as well as for deploying software and system changes after your image has been deployed. This session will go over the basics of building packages with both Apple’s Package Maker application and the JAMF Composer tool. This session is designed for you to follow along on your own computer.

Directory Services
Directory Services is a very complex topic that is often poorly understood. In this session you will learn about to bind Mac OS X to directory services such as Open Directory and Active Directory both from the command line and from the GUI. You will also learn the basics of how to troubleshoot Directory Services issues.

For a DRAFT of the afternoon schedule of sessions, follow this link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1970397/AfternoonSeminarSchedule.pdf

**To register for the afternoon sessions, please follow this URL: http://edseminars.apple.com/event/2823
--
John Wetter
Technical Services Manager
Educational Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools
952-988-5373