5 April, 2018 update: This page used to have a tutorial that walked you through setting up a bunch of GUI tools to manage and keep up-to-date a Munki server. I’ve reconsidered, and I don’t think that’s the best approach for new Munki administrators to take to learning Munki.
First Steps
Here are a series of links you should read and follow, in this order, to explore Munki on your own:
- Demonstration Setup: Walks you through a very basic setup, using a Mac as a Munki server and another Mac (or even the server itself) as a test Munki client. Even though you can do so, I’d highly recommend against setting up a Mac running Server.app to be your Munki server. If you use a Mac, just use regular macOS with the built-in Apache.
- Overview: If you’re absolutely new to Munki, you should really understand the basic mechanics of it and what catalogs and manifests are. If you read the overview and are still confused, ask for clarification from other Munki administrators (see links in Getting Help).
- How Munki Decides What Needs To Be Installed: This is one of the most frequently asked questions from new Munki administrators, so it’s very important you understand why you may have a Munki item that’s in an endless install loop (and how to fix it).
- An opinionated guide to Munki manifests
: Some opinions on how you should structure your manifests in Munki. - Another opinionated guide to Munki manifests: Some more (related) opinions on how you should structure your manifests in Munki.
Getting Help
And here are some great places to go for help, if you have Munki-related questions:
Server Setup
Want to secure your Munki repo and/or move it to Linux? You may find these links handy:
- Using https / self-signed certificates and basic authentication with Munki: If you want to stay with macOS and have basic authentication on an internal-only server.
- Certbot Apache on macOS: If you’re going for basic authentication on a public-facing server, and you want a proper (not self-signed) SSL certificate.
- Setup a Munki repo on Ubuntu 14.04 – Part 1: Yes, I know it says 14.04, but the basic instructions still work for 16.04, and they’ll probably work for 18.04, too.
- Certbot Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial): Proper SSL certificate for Ubuntu (again, if your server is public-facing).
- Using Munki With SSL Client Certificates: Basic authentication not enough security for you? Set up revokable client certificates instead.
Munki-related Helper Tools
Need other helper tools?
- AutoPkg: Allows you to automate downloading and installing new software into your Munki repo. Get to know the command-line tool well first if you choose to also install the (no longer maintained) GUI management for it called AutoPkgr.
- MunkiAdmin: A great graphical frontend for managing your Munki repo (after you’ve already understood how the pieces work together… and, frankly, even with MunkiAdmin, I’d still recommend using munkiimport on the command-line to manually import new items that don’t come through AutoPkg). As an alternative, you may want to check out mwa2, which is web-based.
- MunkiReport-PHP or sal: If you want to add in a reporting piece to see what your Munki clients are up to.
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