OS X Desktop Picture from Server?

[jricelmno]

I have about twenty OS X Avid editing systems. I use a picture of our phone list as a desktop to give our editors quick access to the numbers they need. The problem is the phone list changes at least twice weekly and I need to manually update the desktop picture on each system every time it changes. Is there a way to force the mac to grab a desktop image from a file on a server?

 

[Intell]

You can use AppleScript to make Mac OS X change it to the new image file or symlink the image to a "master" on a shared server somewhere.

 

[ergdegdeg]

You could probably use GeekTool to accomplish that. I don't think it can get images from a server, but you could just set a plain background image and use GeekTool to display the data from the server on top of it (using the curl command or something like that).

Edit: it does let you specifiy a URL of an image so that would work.

 

[jricelmno]

I'm going to try the Applescript method. I neglected to mention that these are mostly 10.4 systems. Thx for the feedback!

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Do you have OSX Sever? If so you can use MCX to set desktops.

 

[jricelmno]

Out IT Manager is going to try that method too. Thx

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Out IT Manager is going to try that method too. Thx

Thats the best way to go because you can option it to prevent people from removing it or allowing them to remove it.