Check out Mike Bombich’s lab deployment tutorial. It’s dated, but he alludes to what you’re asking for at the bottom of page 10. Should be a good starting point.

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/files/workshop.pdf

What particular settings are you looking to change?

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you could either do it using DSLocal policies, or yes, you could replace /S/L/User Templates. But before you go down that route, let’s find out what you’re trying to manage. Also if it this is going to be a one user system, you could get creative and have a script that takes a variable for the shortname (like createUser) and auto populate the home folder with some settings. I’ve already gotten a request for something like that. I have some ideas to make it work.

But MCX is generally the better choice if you have a central server.

can’t MCX be used even if you DON’T have a central Mac server? ie use WGM to create MCX settings and a package to install them?

EDIT:
(meant as continuation of conversation, not answer to the ‘MCX does not cover everything’ comment)

cooperkevind, how much structure (if any) do you have for updating the computers today? Radmind, FileWave, etc? Asked differently, how do you implement a change to all of your machines simultaneously? That information may help people on the forum give you more relevant answers.

– Patrick

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: cooperkevind[/u][p]

what I would really like to know is: After creating my image in InstaDMG. can I open up that image and copy in a new English.lproj ? If so how? I

If not I guess I will work on a script to copy it in before its imaged.

Thanks

Kevin[/p][/QUOTE]

The answer you are looking for is yes, the caveat is ‘good god, don’t do it!’

If I understand your request, the ‘simple’ series of steps you are looking for are:

1) Create a new image the InstaDMG way
2) After it has completed, put the resulting image into DiskUtility and convert it to read/write (thsi will take a while)
3) Then either log in as root or continue by using sudo
4) mount the read/write image
5) If logged in as root, navigate to the preferred English.lproj and drag copy it to the correct place on the read/write image
5a) If not logged in as root than open terminal and [code]sudo cp -R -P /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj /Volumes/{IMAGE}/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj[/code] (please double check my syntax and path… this is done on the fly and I don’t do this by command line often even though I should know how).
6) convert the newly edited image file back to compressed and then
7) scan it for restore

While these 7 (or so) steps seem simple, this is hugely time consuming as all the scanning and converting takes a VERY long time, more dependent on hard drive speed than CPU. I would seriously suggest looking into a script or installer package.
I am currently working on avoiding the use of an installer package but until I have alternatives perfected, I have created (using IceBerg and LanRevInstallEase) a package that puts my pre-configured English.lproj in place during the IDMG process. The two caveats I offer are:
1) build the package as root so you can see your English.lproj without issue
2) Use a preflight script to change the name of the existing English.lproj on the image before you try to put the new one in place.

My pre flight script is super simple and says:
[code]mv $3/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj $3/System/Library/User\ Template/English.OLD[/code]
thats all.
(small admission, I could not find the full path to the MV command, but I did not look hard, if anyone knows it I would be grateful for its posting, thanks.)

I hope all of this helps at least a little bit.

The User Template is pretty empty already. You probably wouldn’t need to remove the existing template before dropping files into it (we aren’t–darn you Dymo!).

Using an installer package would probably be the easiest way. You can install/place files directly into the User Template as a CustomPKG, and then you don’t have to touch the image creation process–your files will end up in the right place automatically. As long as you’re ok with your users changing the settings/files after you’ve put them in the User Template, you should be ok.

– Patrick