[craig.hair]

I know this is an old thread but I have a solution to this and wanted to share for anyone else looking.
I found this thread after googling the issue myself and finding no solutions online.
The posts by Machead10 got me started and i did his steps by installing the server admin tools on a 10.4 client, creating a group, setting the cache (6 hours)
and then comparing that group to one created in 10.6 WGM.

In WGM(10.6), you can create a normal group for your 10.4 clients, set your preferences as normal.
If you enable Inspector and open “Inspector” for that group,
you have an attribute called:

dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXFlags which is mapped to dsAttrTypeNative:apple-mcxflags

Normally in 10.6 (5?) this contains the content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>has_mcx_settings</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

When replaced with the following from the 10.4 created group:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>cache_lifetime_seconds</key>
	<integer>21600</integer>
	<key>has_mcx_settings</key>
	<true/>
	<key>mcx_enabled</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

This tells it to refresh the MCX at set intervals in seconds. (21600 sec = 6 hours)
It looks to have been depreciated in 10.6 (or 10.5)

Sending the 10.4 clients the command in ARD:
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/mcxd.app/Contents/Resources/MCXCacher -f
followed by a reboot, The 10.4 clients should be now getting prefs!

Rather than having to install 10.4 server admin tools, I think this would be a simpler way to go about it and wanted to share.
It may be simple to modify and use Bombichs Home directory Augment script to automate this change to be applied to all groups.

Something like:

dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1/ -append /ComputerGroups VARIABLEGROUP MCXFlags -u VARIABLEDIRADMIN -P VARIABLESECRETPW <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"><dict><key>cache_lifetime_seconds</key><integer>VARIABLETIME</integer><key>has_mcx_settings</key><true/><key>mcx_enabled</key><true/></dict></plist>

Or something…
#Note that that command is untested. Chances are it will need to be “escaped”
As I dont have many groups, I’ll just copy and paste.

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