A Few Tricky Prefs

[vogtstev]

Greetings! I have been trying a combination of setting preferences with MCX and copying appropriate files into the English.lproj. I’m also experimenting with the defaults write command, etc. Anyway, I have a handful of preferences that have been a bear for me. I’ve tried tracking them with Composer, Packagemaker, LogGen, etc.

Security System Preference
-“Require password to unlock each system preference”
(I’ve been able to control this with MCX with the System Preferences.plist, but want an alternative in case I decide not to use MCX this go around)

Universal Access
-“Enable Access for Assistive Devices” (Also can control with MCX, but don’t know where the setting is actually stored)

Appearance
-“Turn off text smoothing for font sizes 4 and smaller.” (Photoshop likes it to be 8)
-“Recent servers,etc. (Change from 10 to whatever)

General Finder Item
-Position of a new finder Window. i.e. when the user first opens the hard drive. (I believe these are in the finder preferences, but have been unable to pinpoint which setting specifically. I know this one is a little anal)

Thanks for any ideas!!

[Greg Neagle]

“Universal Access
-“Enable Access for Assistive Devices”

This one is easy:

sudo touch /private/var/db/.AccessibilityAPIEnabled

Though if you do it this way it only takes effect after a reboot.

-Greg

[Patrick Fergus]

Try using FSEventer:

http://fernlightning.com/doku.php?id=software:fseventer:start

> Security System Preference -“Require password to unlock each system
> preference” (I’ve been able to control this with MCX with the System
> Preferences.plist, but want an alternative in case I decide not to use
> MCX this go around)

/etc/authorization, change the “shared” key to “false” for the “system.preferences” key.

[code]system.preferences

allow-root
class
user
comment
Checked by the Admin framework when making changes to certain System Preferences.
group
admin
shared

[/code]

> Appearance -“Turn off text smoothing for font sizes 4 and smaller.”
> (Photoshop likes it to be 8)

See AppleAntiAliasingThreshold in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.

>-“Recent servers,etc. (Change from 10 to whatever)

Wow–this one doesn’t trigger any file change that FSEventer catches. It must be written on logout. Anyways, some Googling points to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist . I see “MaxAmount” keys in there.

> General Finder Item -Position of a new finder Window. i.e. when the user
> first opens the hard drive. (I believe these are in the finder
> preferences, but have been unable to pinpoint which setting
> specifically. I know this one is a little anal)

This is probably in the .DS_Store file in the folder of interest.

> Thanks for any ideas!!

[Theilgaard]

Does anybody knows how I can select to have predefined input methods (flags) selectable in the login dialogue.

I know that /Library/Preferences/com.apple.login.plist contains the setting to show the input method, but only the US flag is immediately selectable, all others has to be dug out from deep sub-menus.

I can manually add the input methods I want, and my own investigations shows that the file /privat/var/tmp/com.apple.HIToolbox.loginwindow.plist contains the information about this, but if I instal the file on a new image, it does not apply to the login dialogue.

Any suggestions?

[Patrick Fergus]

Poked at that for a while.

/private/var/tmp/com.apple.HIToolbox.loginwindow.plist seems to be where the configuration of which keyboard layout appears when the machine boots. Seems like this file doesn’t get whacked on a restart.

Are you setting showInputMenu in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist to 1 (or true, or whatever the correct value is) on your new image?

I think that placing the HIToolbox plist and setting showInputMenu to 1 would be enough–if it doesn’t work, what portion does work (Input Menu appears, Input menu appears but wrong keyboard layout, etc), if any?

I’m grasping at straws–you may have done all this already.

– Patrick

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