[Radmind-users] Creating new overloads for computer specific Mac OS X builds

[Jeremy R. <jj...@ri...>]

I don't do this often, so I was wondering if others had tips for creating
overloads to accommodate computer specific Mac OS X builds. When I do have
to do this, it usually must be done in haste so I'd like to improve on my
process.

Here what I've most recently done to handle a new unibody MacBook Pro:

1. Leave the installed software as-is, iLife and all.
2. Set up the client in the Radmind server's config file, creating a
certificate if necessary.
3. Choose a minimal command file for the client. The config file has my
normal base OS, negatives, transcripts, and excludes I use for my template
computers -- but it _adds_ exclude lines for every major directory and file
for iLife 08. (I intend to upload this to the Radmind wiki.) This appears to
be the only non-OS software installed on the new MBPs, from quick
inspection.
4. Install the Radmind tools on the client.
5. Radmind the command file and the rest of my management tools and scripts
down to the client, targeting only the directories where they exist.
6. Create a new transcript with the current state of the computer.
7. Edit the resulting transcript in a text editor to comment out all lines
starting with "-" so that I don't have dependencies, and run it through my
normal tclean script to clean up other issues that crop up.

The edited transcript seems to apply cleanly. So far it looks like a stable
system [knock on wood] with the right build of the OS et. al. It has the new
Trackpad System Preferences, the Energy Saver icon is a CFL, it shows the
dual GPUs (one on PCI, the other on PCIe, interestingly).

Any comments/suggestions?


-- 
Jeremy Reichman