setting up an educational network?

[phaedrus]

hi guys, here I am hat in hand...
I've been asked to coordinate a lightwave course at uni running on 100 or so machines (rough guess, 4 rooms 25 machines each room, there might be more though)
for the last 3 years I've been tutoring the course and just putting up with the macs (all running the latest stuff. both in terms of hardware & software) not remembering plugins or prefs or anything usefull, etc. the tech guys always said it was because of the way lightwave stores its prefs & nothing could be done..I cant believe that.
because I'll be in charge next semester I wanna fix it so the students can sit at a machine & just use a GOOD install, with all the plugs, lscripts, interface tabs etc intact.
can anybody point me to a good website or a good networking book or whatever you think it might need, I know theres some really clever mac people here(you might've guessed I'm not one of 'em)
Or is there anyone in perth, west australia who might want to chat about it..
sorry about the long post (though I could've kept going for pages), and thanks in advance for any help offered..
(the bar's open too..drinks on me) :rolleyes:

[luka]

HI phaedrus
remember me?
I'll see if I can find some stuff for you:)

[phaedrus]

hey luka...
my icq# is 5656533 if you wanna chat..
any help is much appreciated :D

[mlinde]

Hi phaedrus. This topic came up earlier this summer, there is a thread archived here about how to set this up. It involved utilizing OS X with different user accounts to protect the core issues/features of LW preferences.

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2801&highlight=preferences

read through this thread, it should help.

[phaedrus]

thanks mlinde,
this looks good, I'll talk to my tech guys & see if its something they could implement...
does this mean each account would need to have the username edited manually? (maybe this is why they told me it couldnt work...tech people are notoriously lazy..hi to any tech people reading this, esp any from edith cowan!)

[mlinde]

You can set up all the 3D students with the same password, and account, that doesn't matter, but it shouldn't be an admin account. The big issue is to separate the users from accessing & modifying the core preferences.