Extending the Casper Suite with Dummy Packages

by Miles A.Leacy VI
Sep, 2009 Issue

Article Synopsis

The Casper Suite by JAMF Software provides a robust management framework for automating system administration tasks. Through Smart Computer Groups, management policies can be assigned to machines that fit certain criteria such as computer name, IP address range and installed software packages, to name a few. In order to meet the challenges and demands of administering a set of Macs, system administrators will, on occasion, find that they would like to assign policies to or create Smart Computer Groups based on criteria that are not built in to the Casper Suite. By using a shell script, we can check for desired criteria, and if found, cause a "dummy" package to be installed. We can then use the receipt from this package as criteria for a Smart Computer Group.

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