First Run issues with applications running in a new Home Directory account.

[sboomer]

I am running a “Golden Triangle” setup at my location thanks to notes I found here “Thank you very much for that”, and am pleased to say it is almost perfect for my environment. But I have a few questions with the way I am doing things.

My Setup:
OSX Server 10.5.5 OD Master.
Microsoft Server 2008 AD DC

My Mac’s authenticate to AD and are managed by a group setup in OD. We also run software called Deepfreeze, which protects the environment from permanent changes upon restart.

Here is were I run into a snag.

Whenever a new user logins to this environment a few programs have “First Run” Features I am trying to either remove or populate automatically via the details tab in a “Plist” on the OD server. (Btw if there is a resource on all the commands I can do, I can probably figure this out myself, but I can’t find information on how to populate and empty plist for a program)

-Particularly the following programs are the only issues:

Microsoft Office Setup Assistant
Itunes (Agreement and Setup)
Roxio Toast (User Profile)

Dock Items: Time Machine.

-What happens:

Because deepfreeze removes any changes, the Home Directory is deleted on restart so settings preset here get deleted.

No problem you say use a network home directory!

Well yes, but I would still want this to be setup so my users aren’t asking me why something is asking them to agree then register online. Note: I have already agreed under the administrator account and registered.

We also have a generic login for students that is the same password on all machines. This will eventually be an individual login, but we do not want to backup 2000 student user accounts nor store them on a network. So forcing a local Home DIrectory is necessary, and I don’t want to save those either.

Anyways. I can elaborate if more info is needed to offer a suggestion, but anything offered would be very welcome and appreciated.

[sboomer]

Wow! Thank you this solved everyone one of my issues. I didn’t even know about the user template folder ha!.

[treehuger]

So to expand on this, how would you go about configuring MS Office unique settings for each user. For example, each user is going to have a different name… Any ideas?

[sboomer]

Well sure let me explain.

My main task for this was to get this setup in lab enviroment, where as, users would not neccisarliy be setting this up for there personal emails or any other types of pesonalization. I needed a generic way for users to not have to run first run setup. (Deep Freeze Enviroment)

If I needed to personalize “Office” for a user I would have to manually setup them on once they login. This is a pc issue too as I cannot expect my users to understand imap pop or exchange setup without having me do it for them.

So as far as automating the personalization for a user, you may need to set them up yourself the first time, or provide a network home directory to retain there settings from machine to machine.

Sorry this probably isnt a solution that would work in that aspect for you.

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