AFAIK, this Application is not scriptable, even though one would perhaps expect such an application (especially from Apple) to be scriptable to an insane degree… Has anyone had any experience of using 3rd party tools to enable scripting of this application? Are there any “gotchas”?
I really want to automate the collection of data from around 1000 Mac systems on a collection of LANs. This data would then be fed into an asset management system that will produce a whopping printed report every month; this report will then be unread by my manager and eventually recycled.
As an alternative, does anyone know if the heavy application of scripts to Apple System Profiler would provide a similar function?
TIA for your comments.
: AFAIK, this Application is not scriptable, even though one would
: perhaps expect such an application (especially from Apple)
: to be scriptable to an insane degree… Has anyone had any
: experience of using 3rd party tools to enable scripting of
: this application? Are there any “gotchas”?
Isn’t Network Setup Assistant a wizard to easily enter setup information more than a means to retrieve setup information that’s been set? Any “gotchas” would be the same as those encountered when scripting any non-scriptable application.
: I really want to automate the collection of data from around 1000
: Mac systems on a collection of LANs. This data would then be
: fed into an asset management system that will produce a
: whopping printed report every month; this report will then be
: unread by my manager and eventually recycled.
For OS 9 or less? If you are looking to collect network setup information, it can be done by scripting Network Setup Scripting, an application that resides in the Scripting Additions folder with OS 8.5 installs and later (up to X). I’ve yet to experience OS X, however KBase doc #75246 mentions properties of a Configuration object when scripting Internet Connect, so there may be something similar to Network Setup Scripting in X. Lot of control panels are scriptable, too.
: As an alternative, does anyone know if the heavy application of
: scripts to Apple System Profiler would provide a similar
: function?
I’ve heard of it being done (scripting ASP). Most of the heavy coding revolves around parsing out the specific information you want from the profile.