Recently I did a little article on importing computers into DeployStudio lists. I got an overwhelming number of email requests to go a step further and look at importing computers into DeployStudio from the command line. I’m guessing lots of people want to bolt some middleware onto their mass deployment tools (can’t say I blame ’em).
The first thing to know is that DeployStudio stores most everything in standard property lists. This includes workflows, computer groups and computers. When you install DeployStudio you selected a location to place your database. For the purpose of this example, we’re going to use /DSDatabase as our location. Within this directory is a folder called Databases. In this folder you’ll see ByHost, which stores each computer in a property list that is the computers MAC address followed by .plist. For example, if my computer has a MAC address of 00254bcc76fa then 00254bcc76fa.plist would be the file that houses information about my computer in DeployStudio. In the ByHost folder is an additional property list called group.settings.plist. In here is the information about the computer groups that you have created. In the Databases folder there is also a directory called Workflows, which houses all of your workflows. These can be seen in the example folder structure here.
When DeployStudio is started, it dynamically loads the items from the property lists to compile its database. You can add additional property lists easily, but when you do you will need to restart DeployStudio each time (or each batch).
There are a number of keys in the property lists, with many of which mirroring data that can be imported using the DSImporter.csv template in my previous article. These include:
- dstudio-auto-disable: Used to disable the DeployStudio Runtime following the initial imaging
- dstudio-auto-reset-workflow: Used to disable the automate checkbox for the workflow
- dstudio-auto-started-workflow: Used to assign a workflow. When populating this via the command line you will need to specify the ID of the workflow (remember that the Workflows are in property lists in the Workflows directory. Each has a key for ID, which is what would be used here
- dstudio-group: Adds the client to a computer group
- dstudio-host-ard-field-1: Fills in the Info 1 Computer Information field from ARD
- dstudio-host-ard-field-2: Fills in the Info 2 Computer Information field from ARD
- dstudio-host-ard-field-3: Fills in the Info 3 Computer Information field from ARD
- dstudio-host-ard-field-4: Fills in the Info 4 Computer Information field from ARD
- dstudio-host-interfaces: Arrays to configure static IP addresses for each NIC
- dstudio-host-new-network-location: Sets up a Location in the Network System Preferences pane
- dstudio-hostname: Sets the HostName
- dstudio-mac-addr: The MAC address of the client
To add a computer, you can use plistbuddy or just the defaults command. In the following example, we’ll continue to house our DeployStudio Repository in the /DSDatabase directory and write in only the computer MAC address and whether it will receive a network location, which from what I can tell are the only required keys:
defaults write /DSDatabase/Databases/ByHost/00254bcc76f2 ‘{“dstudio-host-new-network-location” = NO;”dstudio-mac-addr” =”00:25:4b:cc:76:f2″;}’
defaults write /DSDatabase/Databases/ByHost/00254bcc53ab ‘{“dstudio-host-new-network-location” = NO;”dstudio-mac-addr” =”00:25:4b:cc:53:ab”;”dstudio-host-ard-field-1″=”cedge882″;}’
