Set up Automator/ARD to open an application on 30 computers in sequence

Question

I use ARD to open a program for a list of 30 computers--to start up our school's typing program for little kids. The program initially accesses a database of student records on our server. Unfortunately, the "database" can't be opened by multiple users at the same time, so the application successfully opens on the first computer, but most of the others get a "Database in Use" error.
I'd like to set up an Automator Workflow that would loop through, picking each computer in the list, opening the application, then pausing a few seconds. I haven't found an example to follow.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

I'm not sure about using Automator, but you could write a shell script that tells each computer to open the application in a specific order. For example...
#!/bin/bash
name=`scutil --get ComputerName`
if [ $name = computer1 ]
then
open "/Path/to/application"
else
sleep 5
fi
if [ $name = computer2 ]
then
open "/Path/to/application"
else
sleep 5
fi
if [ $name = computer3 ]
then
open "/Path/to/application"
else
sleep 5
fi
This script assumes that you have given each computer a particular name (which you would insert instead of computer1, computer2, computer3, etc). What it does is it opens the application on a specific computer (i.e. computer1) and tells all other computers to "sleep" or wait for 5 seconds. If it takes longer than 5 seconds to open the typing application, you might want to change this to a higher number.
You can copy and paste this into the "Send UNIX Command" function in ARD in order to run it.
Message was edited by: Jason Agress