How do I manage Mac OS X faculty or staff computers with Radmind, particularly if I need to allow them to install software in /Applications or place files in other portions of the Local or System domains?
By: Richard Glaser - Revised: 2006-05-30 devinThere are several ways to accomplish this. If you definitely want people to install their own software into /Applications and so on, you'll either need to add that software yourself (as the Radmind administrator) or remove /Applications (and potentially other parts of the file system) from management. This is done via one or more negative transcripts.
This is tricky, and you have to weigh the security and manageability implications against the cost. If you add more directories to negative space, they will no longer be managed, so:
- If you install new application versions, you will need some other way to remove them. For example, if you upgrade from Office v.X to Office 2004, you will need to remove Office v.X (which has a different folder in /Applications, and different components within, along with other files elsewhere in the file system) manually or via a script.
- You will lose some security, because the negative space is no longer maintained by a watchful Radmind.
- Versions of the Radmind tools before 1.3 will copy down your positive overload within negative space each time a Radmind session is run. Version 1.3 and later do not, and are designed to properly manage positive data within negative space.