Disable Networking

[Tyiell]

Hi there,

 

Right the school have bought a couple of MacBooks, and we want to disable the wireless networking. I have switched all this off and set the user up as a Standard account. Trouble is, even a standard user has the power to re-enable the Airport program, and join a wireless network (if they have the credentials obviosly). We don't want this, but being fairly unfamiliar with macs, I can't see how to stop it...

 

Ideas?

[Tyiell]

Oops, sorry - I just worked it out!!

 

[HodgeHi]

Also if you want to remove the icon from the menu bar across the top, hold down the apple/cmd key and drag the icon off the bar. It should disappear in a puff of smoke. You may be able to then manage the plist for this bar. I am not 100% sure where this is though as I don't do this myself.

 

Also you may want to mention what you did. It may help others. There are quite a few new comers to the mac that may benefit from your solution.

[Tyiell]

Thanks, I'll do that! No point taunting them with an icon they can't use

[Guest theeldergeek]

Oops, sorry - I just worked it out!!

 

 

Please share - always useful to anyone who isn't familiar.

[Arthur]

If you have ARD you could turn off all the wireless NICs at once using the networksetup command. e.g.

 

networksetup -setairportpower off

[Arthur]

Also if you want to remove the icon from the menu bar across the top, hold down the apple/cmd key and drag the icon off the bar. It should disappear in a puff of smoke. You may be able to then manage the plist for this bar. I am not 100% sure where this is though as I don't do this myself.

 

There are actually a couple of plist's that control which items are displayed on the right-hand side of the menu bar. The first (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist) is for AirPort, Battery, BlueTooth, Date/Time, Eject, Spaces, Volume etc., while the second (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist) usually contains icons which third-party apps have added e.g. Tweetie, Default Folder X, LogMeIn and so on.

 

If you wanted to remove just the AirPort icon you could do it either of two ways. The first would be to use the method suggested by HodgeHi and then give everyone your customized version of com.apple.systemuiserver.plist via WGM; or if you wanted to do it from the command-line you can use the "defaults write" command to create a new plist file.

 

defaults write com.apple.systemuiserver '{"menuExtras" = ("/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Clock.menu", "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Volume.menu");}'

 

 

This should contain all of the menu extras you want in your menu bar except for AirPort.menu. More info here.

[Arthur]

Oops, sorry - I just worked it out!!

Out of interest, how did you do it?

[Tyiell]

Given that their accounts were limited (this wouldn't work on admin), I basically just turned it off and found the little tick boxes that say that you have to be and administrator to turn them back on! The ethernet one is set that way anyway - I just turned off dhcp and disabled the adapter (you automatcially have to be an administrtator to re-enable them), Airport as an option to make limit it to admins only.

 

Sorted!!

[Tyiell]

Also if you want to remove the icon from the menu bar across the top, hold down the apple/cmd key and drag the icon off the bar. It should disappear in a puff of smoke. You may be able to then manage the plist for this bar. I am not 100% sure where this is though as I don't do this myself.

 

Also you may want to mention what you did. It may help others. There are quite a few new comers to the mac that may benefit from your solution.

 

I also did this - once I had removed the access, I removed the icon too, just to be sure of things