Installing the Configuration Manager client on Mac OS X is a new feature of SCCM 2012 SP1. Unfortunately the installation process is nowhere near as easy as installing for a PC. The steps go something like this:
- Download a DMG of the client installer
- Run the install script
- Run the script to get a certificate from the CA
Fortunately, these steps are quite easy to script.
Before you proceed any further, be sure that manual deployments of the Mac client work. James Bannan has an excellent guide on this over on his website.
In this instance, we’ll assume the script is being run as part of an automated deployment, so it would be useful to have the dmg file hosted somewhere, as well as credentials that can request the certificate. For this, I’ve created a directory in my SCCM 2012 SP1 MP’s Default Web Site called “MacClient”, with contents as follows:
Get-ChildItem C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MacClientMode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a--- 10/01/2013 10:53 AM 50 credentials.txt
-a--- 6/12/2012 5:39 PM 4776423 macclient-5.0.0.7804.1000.dmg
-a--- 10/01/2013 9:29 AM 29 MacClient-dmg-latest.txt
This is accessible at https://sccm.margiestravel.com/MacClient/. I had to add a MIME type for .DMG so that IIS would allow it to be downloaded. This is a simple addition to the <system.webServer> section of the web.config file in this directory:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<staticContent>
<mimeMap fileExtension=".dmg" mimeType="file/download" />
</staticContent>
<directoryBrowse enabled="true" />
</system.webServer>
</configuration>Credentials.txt is a two-line text file, the first line of which contains a username in the format DOMAIN\Username and the second a password. For example:
MARGIESTRAVEL\SccmCertDeployment
Pa$$w0rd
The MacClient-dmg-latest.txt file is called by the client script. This text file contains the just the filename of the latest version of the SCCM client DMG, located in the same directory. This means that you can keep older installers in place for whatever reason, while the automatic script will be sure to grab the latest version. Alongside this is macclient-5.0.0.7804.1000.dmg, the DMG file containing the Mac Client for SCCM 2012 SP1.
As you can see, the majority of the operation is performed server-side, which means this script can be built into your OS X deployment/post-image procedures and should never need to be updated. All you have to do is drop a new DMG in, update the text file, and occasionally you’ll likely want to change the credentials that request the certificate. (I know typically the computer’s user would request the certificate themselves with their own AD credentials, but in this case I’m using the same set of credentials for everyone. The script could certainly be modified to prompt for a set of AD credentials from the user) Here’s a copy of the script. Lines 18-22 are the only ones that should require changing. Here’s a brief description of what each variable does:
appDistributionSiteis the base URL of the folder containing the credentials.txt and MacClient-dmg-latest.txt filesconfigMgrServeris the FQDN of your SCCM 2012 SP1 Management Point that’s configured for internet accessscriptVersionis just the version number of this script. You may wish to increment this if you ever make changes to the script, as scriptVersion is reported to the SCCM server as the client’s User Agent. You can view this in your IIS logsuserAgentis a string presented to the web server when downloading filesworkingDirectorydefines where on the client files will be placed while installing the SCCM client. The script will create this folder if it does not exist. The default is~/CMInstallTemp
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