Home › Forums › OS X Server and Client Discussion › Questions and Answers › Forcing desktop picture on clients
Is there an easy way to make user groups use a specific desktop pic when logging in? I’m at a small university and want a generic campus background for student sign-ons and don’t feel like logging into all the accounts and changing them personally before locking them out of the preferences… I haven’t really been able to find specifics on how to do this. I have the files locally on each client, but would be just as happy (or more so) having them on the server (OS X 10.5.7 and OD). I heard there was a UNIX command to set the desktop and could mass send that via ARD, but haven’t been able to find any other info on that, either.
Thanks.
Do you not use managed preferences from a Mac OSX Server?
If you do you can depict wallpapers, etc via MCX settings in workgroup manager. Simply set the relevant wallpaper on your admin-client machine that has server admin tools on it, run WM and deploy the relevant plist file from ~/Library/Preferences to the relevant user/computer group(s). So long as the image is present on all clients in exactly the same location, you’re sorted. Thats how I’ve done it for my users..
How exactly do I do this through WGM? I’m fairly new to servers…
Thanks.
The easiest way to do it is to have a user group containing ALL of your users set up. I for instance have an ALL USERS group containing my Active Directory ‘Domain Users’ group.
Firstly ensure you have the correct wallpaper set as YOUR wallaper on your admin machine on which you are running Workgroup Manager (easier on a client, than the server).
Then in WM select your all users group and click on preferences along the top of WM. Then select details from below rather than overview. Overview shows the default icons for things you can manage, detials allows you to add specific plist files.
Click on + (add) below this winow, then browse within your user profile to ~/Library/preferences/ and locate com.apple.desktop and select it. This will then basically deploy YOUR desktop wallpaper settings to your all users group the next time someone logs in. This is of course dependent that the exact wallpaper is in the exact same location on all of your clients.
Hope this helps. Its pretty easy. Just make sure you have the right server admin tools installed on your admin client. No one needs to be stood infront of an X-Serve doin this kinda thing, its easier to configure 1 client with all the preferences you want to deploy, then fire them out this way.
Ah, that sounds good. I’ve used the Details section to fix some dock icon issues I’ve had, but wasn’t sure about adding the plist stuff from scratch. Thanks.
No worries mate. You can pretty much add any personalisations you like in there, including licence information for apps such as iWork, etc. so you dont have to go round typing licence keys in all your machines, as its nearly all found in /Library/Preferences, or ~/Library/Preferences
MCX is great for this, so is powerful third party tools like Casper and Composer that can capture and enforce user level preferences.
Has anyone had any luck with enforcing the desktop background on two screens? We manage a number of iMacs with secondary screens and have only been able to manage the desktop on the iMac screen. Is there a trick to getting WGM to apply settings to the external monitor??
Cheers
Not sure but have you tried replacing the default picture of what is being set on the second monitor as the picture you want in /Library/Desktop Pictures
Like I replace the default Aqua Blue.jpg with your picture you want to show. And replace /Library/Desktop Pictures/Nature/Aurora.jpg with yours as well.
Not sure if that will work…..just an idea that popped into my head when i read your post.
-Dan
If you go into WGM, and select the user group or computer group you want to manage and add the managed client app to the details side you can set specific MCX settings, that will be applied to that group. If you add the plist that controls the desktop you can hard code the settings in XML what you want it to be. Then set the path to the background picture and users will not be able to change it.
[QUOTE][u]Quote by: rikakiah[/u][p]Is there an easy way to make user groups use a specific desktop pic when logging in?[/p][/QUOTE]
Use google to find the document “tandtleo14.3.pdf”
Look at page 52.
hi its very good, and i need more information about this
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It also appears, rather than messing up your own system, you can set up another system and “reach out” to that system’s preference file and propagate it to your group. I’d rather do that than constantly keep changing my own machine which actually bears little resemblance to what my client machines are going to look like.
Just a thought.