Deployment Journal

By: Mikio Moriyasu - Revised: 2006-08-03 devin

Introduction

This journal documents the issues and concerns that patrons, administrative staff, consultant staff, and support staff have encountered in the four main groups of machines supported by Student Computing Labs during its deployment of and transition to Mac OS X. It will be periodically updated to note when an existing issue has been resolved or to highlight new issues that have come up during deployment.


Public Kiosks

2/28/02
  • Closed browser window confuses some users.
    WORKAROUND - Using a AppleScript Studio application that will check if IE has a window open and will open a window if not.
  • Replacing the "Finder" is problematic.
    WORKAROUND - Using a AppleScript Studio application that will check if IE is active and re-launch it if not.
  • No scheduled Startup/Shutdown.
  • Disable "Apple Menu" commands to stop patrons from using them.
    • Sleep
    • Restart
    • Shut Down
    • Logout
    WORKAROUND- Using a utility such as "Fruit Menu", this issue has been resolved.
  • Launching certain helper apps such as Acrobat Reader via the browser will not work.
    FIXED - The kiosk user did not have write permissions to Desktop folder.
3/11/02
  • In Internet Explorer, users can browse local files/folders by entering "file:///" in the address bar.
    FIXED - "Protocol Helpers" preferences for the "file" can be changed to point to an application that users do not have permissions.
5/14/02
  • In Internet Explorer, entering "afp://" in the URL window could force the Finder to launch.
    FIXED - By modifying permissions, the execute rights to that kiosk user group can be removed.

Open Area Machines

October 2002
  • The decision is made to not distribute Classic along with Mac OS X but to offer it on a "by request" basis only.