User Settings…

[tristan_mason]

Hi All

Does anyone have list or can point me to somewhere which has a list of Plist’s and/or default.write.com’s etc that can be used in firstboot or as pkg’s for changing settings and preferences for the OS, Finder and System Preferences? Being a Composer user I have access to a fair list but i’m looking for something comprehensive so I can customise the UI with instaDMG as much as I usually do with the monolithic method.

I know MCX and OD can do this better or a least i’m told this is the preferred method but we’re not there yet.

Regards

Tristan 😉

[dead2sin]

While not exhaustive, there is a list of common things that people change here:

They are split up by firstboot script and postflight:

[url]http://osxdeployment.com/wiki/Firstboot_Postflight_Commands
[/url]
[url]http://osxdeployment.com/wiki/Firstboot_Script_Commands[/url]

If you need any specific settings beyond that, let me know and I can tell you how to wrangle them 🙂

Nate

[tristan_mason]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: dead2sin[/u][p]

If you need any specific settings beyond that, let me know and I can tell you how to wrangle them 🙂

Nate[/p][/QUOTE]

Thanks Nate

My specific settings are as follows (sorry in advance if I have missed answers to these elsewhere…)

These are all System Prefs settings…
– Change the appearence from default ‘Blue” to “Graphite”
– “Hardware”, change the default video DVD app to something other than DVD Player (VLC of course…)
– Set the secondary mouse button to “right click”
– Suppress the Bluetooth menu bar icon
– Suppress the Time Machine menu bar icon
– Turn software Update off Airport
– Suppress Airport menu bar icon

Other
– Remove the “About Downloads” pdf

Regards

Tristan

[Allister Banks]

Hey Tristan,

I believe the rm of the AboutDwnlds pdf is just trashing it from the global template, which you can do with a line in the postflight of a payload-free package.

All the others are usually running a snapshotting tool like composer or packagemaker, or an fsevents or dtrace-based tool like fseventer or opensnoop(fseventer is easiest IMO) and seeing what pref file is getting what key(s) toggled by the pref pane change. Then enforce that either the (labor-intensive, maintenance-wise) manual way by either overriding it in a login script per user or in the global template. But ideally, yes, directory-enforced customizations and preferences are the way to be.

[url]https://github.com/arubdesu/One-Stop-LocalMCX[/url] is my attempt to roll localMCX into an image, and it works if you wanted to give it a try. Let us know if you get stuck anywhere, Allister

[tristan_mason]

Thanks for that Allister.

Just had a fiddle with fseveter. Blimey, what a great app. Never used such a tool before but it’s very useful. I’ll have a gander at your MCX stuff also as i’m keen to use something a little more global and my pkg payloads are getting up there in sheer numbers, nearly 40 all in all which is a lot to manage and more to the point de-bug when something doesn’t work.

Since i’ve been going down this road i’ve become a terminal user which I never set out to do but it too has been great to learn. Probably why I didn’t think of using the rm command to remove the pdf.

Cheers

Tristan

[tristan_mason]

OK, I got the mouse and globals and the SUS from Composer. I had deleted bits of them i deemed not required from my test pkg’s hence no settings had changed (duh!). Onto the menu bar items suppression…

I’ve had a squiz at the MCX stuff bug i’ve not quite got my head around it conceptually. Tomorrow perhaps.

Tris

[Allister Banks]

The single most comprehensive book on the subject is Enterprise Managed Mac Preferences by Ed Marczak and Greg Neagle. Check it out when you have a chance, it’s a quick read and full of real valuable info on everything you’re trying to do.

Allister

[tristan_mason]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: Allister[/u][p]The single most comprehensive book on the subject is Enterprise Managed Mac Preferences by Ed Marczak and Greg Neagle. Check it out when you have a chance, it’s a quick read and full of real valuable info on everything you’re trying to do.

Allister [/p][/QUOTE]

Bought it and am reading as I type (well not quite but you get the idea…).

Thanks for the good oil. MCX is making sense the more I read.

I am about to purchase Casper Imaging Suite by JAMF. Am not sure how much of the last 2 months will be consigned to the bin but i’m betting i’ll have a sound understanding of what is going on under the hood. Will be interesting to see side by side what works well. I figured that in the long run the Faculty will be better off with an “on the shelf” solution. We’ll see.

Tris

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