iTunes in Labs

We’re using iTunes to manage our sound effects and production music — about 8,000 tracks that are stored on the server. Students login using their AD credentials and the clients pull management data from our Open Directory server. When the student logs out, their local account is deleted. A login hook copies the master itunes music database to their local account so they can see all the songs. All of this works fine.

What I need to do is stop iTunes from opening the “iTunes Setup Assistant” every time a student logs in an runs iTunes. Since they are doing this once or twice a day, clicking “cancel” or going through the steps is time consuming and annoying. I’ve already placed the correct com.apple.itunes.plist file in ~/Library/Preferences and the UUID itunes plist file in the ByHost folder.

I’ve found that if I use a login hook to change the permissions on the ~/Preferences/ByHost directory to read-only and have the com.apple.itunes.-UUID-.plist file in place then the annoying dialog won’t pop up and everything works fine. However, I worry that making the ByHost directory read-only is going to cause problems elsewhere so this isn’t a practical solution. Any tips? Thanks!