MarkT08 wrote:Non-admin users are prompted for admin credentials when they "open" the Xampp control panel.
Only if these users are booting the machine! You need only to start Xampp once. Simply start the workstation every morning (or ever let it run for weeks - why not?) and start Xampp once (you may even start it automatically as a system service!), when you switch off the workstation , Xampp is shutdown as well.
You simply should not switch off the Workstation, it should be sufficient, that each user logs in and out instead. Modern Mainboards and CPUs "fall to sleep" with very very low energie consumption, mostly less than always to switch on/off the machine for each user.
But even if you would like to switch off the machine after a student loggs off, you still may start Xampp automatically at boot time as a service (which is automatically done with root permission), because Apache and MySQL may be run as system service. This is "normal" way how to start Apache etc. The Xampp Control panel is meant only for clueless enduser, but an educated admin *should* be able to start Apache and MySQL as a system service automatically at boot time.
For example, I am currently working with an Ubuntu Notebook and I installed the autostart of Xampp to the system autostart - when the notebook has booted, everyhing is already started and i do not have to know any admins credentials (as a standard user). I even do not use Xampps Control Panel. On Unix systems the "init" process (corresponding to /etc/init.d) is responsible for the task of starting system services. I dont know OSX well, but as a "unixoid" OS there should be something very similar to that.
P.S.: As i found out with the help of wikipedia, the "init" process of Unix have been replaced by the "launchd" Process in MacOSX. With the help of launchd you may start Apache Daemon (httpd) and MySQL Daemon (mysqld) automatically on startup.