[UniMacTech] Bulk region set via ARD

[Mark Szota]

Hi Neil,

It was I who wanted to know how to do this a while ago! Unfortunately 
there doesn't seem to be a way to do this remotely, which is a shame. 
However, at the time I had a work experience student who was more than 
willing to carry out the dirty work Terry talks about :)

It's a pity Apple won't include a utility to do this remotely, it'd be a 
real time saver.

Cheers
Mark


Terry Brady wrote:
> Hi Neil,
>
> On 01/04/2008, at 8:37 AM, Neil Wiltshire wrote:
>> I know this has been discussed sometime in the past but I am only now 
>> needing to bulk set DVD region to 4 for quite a few intel imacs.
>>
>> I've tried "sudo /usr/bin/setregion 4" but this fails.
>>
>> Did anyone work a simple way of doing this in bulk?
>
>
> As far as I know you cannot initiate a region change via a script - it 
> actually requires putting a DVD in the drive to trigger the firmware 
> code.
>
> What you can do is allow the initial region selection for the drive to 
> be performed by any user instead of requiring admin rights. This is 
> done by modifying the /etc/authorization file. A quick web search for 
> "dvd setregion /etc/authorization" gives you lots of examples to work 
> from, and then there's 
> <http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2095.html> which 
> explains what's going on behind the scenes.
>
> The only real downside here is that if somebody sets a drive to a 
> region other than 4, you'll have to manually visit the machine with a 
> region 4 DVD and admin credentials in order to override it.
>


-- 
Mark Szota

Campus IT Co-ordinator
Berwick School of IT
Monash University
Clyde Road, Berwick, Victoria, Australia, 3806

Tel: +61 3 9904 7122
email: Mark.Szota at infotech.monash.edu.au