Re: Using Amaya 9.2.1 with networked Macs

On 31/08/2005, at 9:18 PM, Irene Vatton wrote:
> On Wednesday 31 August 2005 02:49, John Buell wrote:
>
>> I'm administrator for a couple of Mac labs at a high school near  
>> Chicago.
>> One of the classes taught in one of the Mac labs is web design, and I
>> thought I'd let the class try Amaya. It installs and works fine in  
>> 10.3.9
>> and 10.4.2, if it's used by a local user. However, we're in a network
>> environment (a cross-platform one at that), and Amaya doesn't seem  
>> to work
>> in this setting. A student can log in, launch Amaya from the dock,  
>> but it
>> bounces without ever opening a window or actually starting. Is  
>> there any
>> thing I can do to get it to work, or any information I can offer  
>> to help
>> get the program to work in such an environment in a later version?
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> John Buell
>>
>
> We never tested this kind of configuration and don't know how it  
> works.
>
>  It could be a problem with:
> - access to working directories ($USER_HOME/.amaya)
> - fonts access
> - authorization to open the window
>
> Regards
> -- 
>      Irčne.

I replied to John off-list, but I'll add a few notes here.

MacOS-X in a student lab environment is a not well known area
for many software vendors. They assume that the user is the owner,
with local admin rights. Apple assume that you will use
"Managed Preferences" thru the Workgroup Manager, which works if
the Managed Prefs, and the users' Home directories reside on
a MacOS-X server.

If they are on a Windows server system, then the "roaming profiles"
used by windows clients are no use at all for MacOS clients.

The usual problem is that applications are installed and configured
on a sample machine by an admin user. Before the machine can be used
as an image to propagate to the rest of the lab, you must create a
generic student account, and populate it with desired preferences,
and set suitable privileges, by hand with Terminal.app.
If the students are to be allowed their own fonts, then
~/Library/Fonts must be writable for students :-(

We have found some multimedia apps will not work across a network.
We have a logon script to download the whole ~/Library/
to the local machine from the user's networked Home directory,
then upload it at logoff.

In the specific case of Amaya there are 1 dir & 1 file of concern:

~/.amaya
drwxr-xr-x   28 myself  myself     952 Sep  1 08:44 .amaya

~/Library/Preferences/org.Amaya-9.2.1.plist
-rw-------     1 myself  myself    390 Sep  1 08:44  
org.Amaya-9.2.1.plist

If the student has full privileges to a local Home dir
these will be created on first starting Amaya.

If the student's Home dir is networked, it must be mounted,
and now I'm out of my depth ;-)  I haven't got a handy student acct
to test whether Amaya can create its prefs on a networked Home.

If your students have a generic local account, ie. auto-logon
as student, but with reduced privileges (as we do in some small labs)
you may need to copy your ~/.amaya and ~/Library/Preferences/ 
org.Amaya-9.2.1.plist
and change them
chown -R root:[student-group]
chmod -R 775


On 31/08/2005, at 9:57 PM, Leon Stringer wrote:

> Is there a way you can launch it from a console?

Well, yes, but the path to the executable inside Amaya.app
is somewhat obscure ;-) After deleting my Prefs I tried to run it,
but it remained as a child of the Terminal, was not handed over
to the Window Manager, and never created org.Amaya-9.2.1.plist

   [MacAddict:~] pk% /Applications/Amaya.app/Contents/MacOS/ 
Amaya-9.2.1/wx/bin/amaya -v

   realexecname '/Users/pk/amaya.app/Contents/MacOS//Applications/ 
Amaya.app/Contents/MacOS/Amaya-9.2.1/wx/bin/amaya'

   OpenGL Status:
     Software Mode = Hard
     VENDOR : NVIDIA Corporation
     VERSION : 1.5 NVIDIA-1.4.6
     RENDERER : NVIDIA NV34MAP OpenGL Engine
     GLU Version : 1.3 MacOSX
     Aux buffers count 0
     Acumm rgba : 0 0 0 0




Peter Kerr                       Mail.app 2.0.3 (734)
Snr Technician
School of Music,  University of Auckland,  New Zealand

Received on Wednesday, 31 August 2005 22:00:19 UTC