com.apple.MCX.sidebar

[kamil]

I’m wondering if anyone has managed (har har) to get the com.apple.MCX.sidebar preference manifest to take effect? I’d like to put some common network locations in to users’ sidebars and have it managed “often”. However, it seems that no matter what I put in the “Custom URLs” attribute, nothing ever shows up in the sidebar.

I’ve tried all sorts of variations, including straight paths like /Network/Foo, or file:///Network/Foo, or file:///localhost/Network/Foo.

Has anyone had any success with this?

[OD Master]

You need to use afp:// or smb:// URLs.

I have them in effect on several sites and that works as it should.

– Norbert

[adriancase]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: OD+Master[/u][p]You need to use afp:// or smb:// URLs.

I have them in effect on several sites and that works as it should.

– Norbert[/p][/QUOTE]

Hi, I’m trying to get this going as well, and got a disturbing lack of google hits on it… could you give an example of one of your working entries, the MCX.sidebar properties seem so much more basic than the normal sidebar plist, so I can’t help but think I am missing something… and when you get for example an smb share in the sidebar, what section does it come up in?
Leopard normally doesn’t seem to think much of links straight to shares in the sidebar, objects *within* shares are fine…
Thanks

[OD Master]

In Workgroup Manager select the Computer Group you want to add the Sidebar items to, and click on Preferences > Details.

Add an entry for com.apple.MCX.sidebar, then add an array “customBaseURLs” with the server URLs under “Always”.

Apple does not really push this solution, it’s rather an intermediate step. The real thing will be to use Wide-Area Bonjour to advertise your servers across subnets. But probably not final before Snow Leopard…

– Norbert

[adriancase]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: OD+Master[/u][p]In Workgroup Manager select the Computer Group you want to add the Sidebar items to, and click on Preferences > Details.

Add an entry for com.apple.MCX.sidebar, then add an array “customBaseURLs” with the server URLs under “Always”.

Apple does not really push this solution, it’s rather an intermediate step. The real thing will be to use Wide-Area Bonjour to advertise your servers across subnets. But probably not final before Snow Leopard…

– Norbert[/p][/QUOTE]

Thanks for the quick answer Norbert!

Unfortunately thats what I already had with nothing showing up in the sidebar 😕
If Apple doesn’t push this solution, what solution do people use for making (from the server end) direct links to shares as simple as possible for OD users that aren’t up to browsing the network for the thing they want…?
Thanks in advance

[OD Master]

> Unfortunately thats what I already had with nothing showing up in the sidebar 😕

That works without any problem here, just use the plain URLs “afp://server.example.com” and nothing else for the strings.
I re-read you post and you mention that you put this in the “Often” section, I have them under “Always”!!

> If Apple doesn’t push this solution, what solution do people use for making (from the server end) direct links to shares as simple as possible for OD users that aren’t up to browsing the network for the thing they want…?

You can already add Service records in DNS, manually using Server Admin. That works OK, there just a basic problem that the DNS addresses there end with a dot and Leopard Finder is (currently) unable to use Kerberos for connecting to these addresses.

– Norbert

[adriancase]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: OD+Master[/u][p]> Unfortunately thats what I already had with nothing showing up in the sidebar 😕

That works without any problem here, just use the plain URLs “afp://server.example.com” and nothing else for the strings.
I re-read you post and you mention that you put this in the “Often” section, I have them under “Always”!!

> If Apple doesn’t push this solution, what solution do people use for making (from the server end) direct links to shares as simple as possible for OD users that aren’t up to browsing the network for the thing they want…?

You can already add Service records in DNS, manually using Server Admin. That works OK, there just a basic problem that the DNS addresses there end with a dot and Leopard Finder is (currently) unable to use Kerberos for connecting to these addresses.

– Norbert[/p][/QUOTE]

I was using Always, it was the original post from kamil the was using Often 😉
Just to be clear, since I think we may not be talking about exactly the same thing… my goal is to have the OD server add an item to the finder sidebar, that would be for example, “MyFiles” which goes directly to “smb://adserver/myfiles”
Everthing in terms of connecting to this share as far as authentication and just browsing around is fine, its just my users aren’t up to browsing around 🙂

[OD Master]

Again, you can’t have a named item this way, just the URL.

Enter the string “afp://serverexample.com” in the MCX prefs and you will get a Sidebar item “server.example.com”.

That’s all you can get, if you try to enter an additonal name somewhere this will fail.

– Norbert

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