Expert: LizaL - 3/7/2005

Question
Do you know if Photoshop supports unattended installation on Mac OS X?

In other words is there a command-line or some config option that can make the install happen over a network or in "silent" mode?  (No user interaction necessary is what I'm after)

Thanks!

JohnB

Answer
Hi John,

When I was teaching, I set up a Mac lab with fifteen iMacs, and asked myself that same question all the time, LOL!

Actually, you *can* do unattended network installations if you have Macintosh Manager installed on your server. I was able to do this with Photoshop myself, and this was six years ago.

I will admit, though, that was the only time I've done unattended installations over a Mac network, and I haven't done it since. I had Macintosh Manager installed on my server, and the client software on all the iMacs. Macintosh Manager was how I did all my lab software updates, including OS upgrades.

It *used* to be this was all you needed in order to maintain a Mac network.

But it looks like now it's Mac OS X Server, which includes a lot of the components of the old Macintosh Manager like Net Boot and Net Install. I did some searching, and found old links for Macintosh Manager -- from 2002 -- so I'm pretty sure it's obsolete now, and has been usurped by Mac OS X Server.

Here's the link on the Apple site for Mac OS X Server:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/

There's a lot of information on this part of the Apple site, including lots of PDFs regarding OS X Server:
http://www.apple.com/server/documentation/

Hope this helps! And if you need any clarification or have any more questions, please don't hesitate to post back.

Lisa