Automount

When I set up the BCRC and the other computer labs in the department, I found it very convenient to have a networked file volume available as scratch space for everyone to share. Years ago, it was implemented using Appleshare and more recently with SMB. I used a variety of strategies to make the connection, but when we started using OSX, I implemented it with an Applescript -- a bit clunky, but it worked. I was never happy with it as a solution and played around with using automount. The advantage with automount is that you don't need to make a connection until you're ready to use the volume -- then the system sets up the connection automatically and tears it down as soon as it's been idle for a minute or two. I spent a few hours over the past two days trying to figure out how to get automount to work using files, rather than having it as part of the netinfo database. There are a bunch of pages about automount and macosx but I couldn't get any of them to work. So, I set up netinfo the way I wanted it, made a new radmind transcript just for netinfo, and edited netinfo out of all the other transcripts. I hate embedding any kind of settings in netinfo because it's entirely opaque -- a bunch of binary files that can't be read or tweaked easily by a human. I wish Apple would use freaking text files for settings -- it's such a PITA to deal with binary configuration files and for what? To save the computer the time of doing it. Sorry -- that's what I have computers for -- to make life convenient for me and not the other way around.

I like MacOS X as a desktop operating system -- its stable, if a bit slow. But for management in the labs, its very frustrating. It would be a lot easier to use linux We are in a position where we could switch to Ubuntu easily enough in the labs, although there are a few legacy apps that wouldn't be available -- but they probably won't be available once we switch to Intel anyway. When that time comes, I think I may advocate to go with Linux.