Basic requirements for Munki

Knowledge Requirements

  • You should have at least a basic understanding of IP addresses and domain names, and the ability to assign a static IP to a computer/server, give a computer/server a proper fully qualified domain name that internal or external DNS can recognize, or do both.
  • You should be able to double-click-install a .pkg on a Mac
  • If you have never maintained a web server before, you have some sense of the idea of a computer serving up files for other computers to view or download, and the importance of securing it with https (either with a self-signed or proper Certificate Authority–issued certificate
  • Even though there are graphical (point-and-click) ways to manage Munki, in order to fully understand what you’re doing, it’s best to learn some things via the command-line. So even if you don’t know a lot of terminal commands, being comfortable copying and pasting or re-typing some commands into the terminal will be critical to the learning experience. You don’t have to have these commands memorized.

Hardware Requirements

  • At least one web server (or a Mac that can act as one). That can be a server in the cloud (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform) or one you host locally (e.g., Linux VM, IIS on a Windows server). If you don’t have any of those things, you can even just use a Mac Mini. Since the Mac Mini would be the lowest common denominator (the only thing we can assume you have if you’re doing Mac management would be at least two Macs, and one of those can be the web server you host the Munki repo on).
  • A working Internet connection. Your client Macs will be downloading files from the web server that hosts the Munki repo Even if you don’t have a great external connection, the Macs should at least be able to reach an internal server.

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