I'm having a real hard time with distribution!

[Bobdude161]

I manage a 32 station Mac lab filled with eMacs and G3 iMacs running 10.3.9 and one with 10.4.11. For the past few months I have been trying to find ways to distribute files across all 32 computers (that run 10.3) from one main computer (that runs 10.4.11). NetRestoring would be nice, but without Mac OS X Server, making a client OS behave like a server is frustrating. I would know, I've tried many times but failed. Now I'm just settling for a program or script that could distribute a file to all shared drives to a specific folder on each Mac.

Here's what I've tried:

Carbon Copy Cloner - Doesn't work because I can't install the network credentials on 10.3

SuperDuper Free version - doesn't do multiple disks at the same time

CrashPlan - won't load on my 700 Mhz eMac with 512 MB of RAM running 10.4. Might need a GB of RAM to run, that's what's required. Or the school is blocking the port 443 (something like that) to connect to CrashPlan Central which is needed.

JaBack8 - confusing. not sure if it works because the program is not functioning or I'm not functioning.

DeployStudio - ???? not sure about this one, it has poor instructions at least for me

These are all free versions as you can see. What are my options. What do you know that will work for sure and I'll pay if it works well.

 

[JGruber]

If they are all going to the same folder, and all the machines have the same hard drive name, Apple Remote Desktop is what you need. I know it's not free, but it will do exactly as you want.

I do this all the time with files of all sizes, biggest one so far is 7GB. Worked like a champ.

 

[Les Kern]

Yep, get ARD. You'll never look back. EDU rate is pretty good.