Changing dock icons

[MarsRed]

Hi all,

 

We're upgrading to a new version of Office and need to change the dock icons in every dock on every client. I've scripted this and am all set for existing users. However, I haven't figured out how to do this for the user template that will be applied to new users.

 

We're using the Casper Suite, which creates its own user template in /System/Library/User Template/user.template. So the file I'm trying to modify is /System/Library/User Template/user.template/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist. For the existing users I used the the defaults command, but that seems to only work when there is a user associated with a given home folder.

 

Any ideas on how I can remove and add icons to that template plist?

 

Thanks!

[HodgeHi]

Am I reading this right? You have a newer version of Office and so want to update their Docks with the new version?

 

If so then just open WGM on a Client machine and then go to the group that the users are in and then click the preferences icon at the top. Click on the dock option and then click on the "Manage Once" option. Now change the old Office icons to the newer Office icons.

 

If you have not got things set up this way or do not have a mac server then you could use ARD to copy a cm.apple.dock.plist file into the location you want it to go into. Log on as one of the users that have the docks set up right copy the preference file and then use ARD to deploy into the user.template.

 

Failing this you could just use the sudo cp command to copy the file into the correct location.

 

I wouldn't bother trying to change the file (unless you don't want to remove other previously set dock options), I would just overwrite the file with the updated one.

[MarsRed]

Thanks for your reply!

 

Unfortunately these options wouldn't work for a few reasons. First of all, we're not using Open Directory to manage the clients; Casper has its own preference management functions. Second, I do not want to replace the entire dock icon since different machines have different default docks in their user templates - so I'd rather not have multiple packages with different com.apple.dock.plists for each build and generation of preference templates.

 

I think I have a way to solve my problem. I'm going to try it out today and will post back if successful.

 

Thanks again.

 

Am I reading this right? You have a newer version of Office and so want to update their Docks with the new version?

 

If so then just open WGM on a Client machine and then go to the group that the users are in and then click the preferences icon at the top. Click on the dock option and then click on the "Manage Once" option. Now change the old Office icons to the newer Office icons.

 

If you have not got things set up this way or do not have a mac server then you could use ARD to copy a cm.apple.dock.plist file into the location you want it to go into. Log on as one of the users that have the docks set up right copy the preference file and then use ARD to deploy into the user.template.

 

Failing this you could just use the sudo cp command to copy the file into the correct location.

 

I wouldn't bother trying to change the file (unless you don't want to remove other previously set dock options), I would just overwrite the file with the updated one.

[MarsRed]

Okay, so I figured this out. We have an admin account use for managing the machines that has an unmodified dock plist because no one has even logged in to this account on every client. So I included this account within the scope of the script, which removes the old icons and adds the new ones to each account. I then copied the new dock plist from this account into the user template.

 

One thing I did find is that the /System/Library/User Template/user.template directory doesn't work as I expected it to. Adding the plist into that folder, even though it has the file hierarchy of the user template, did not seem to do anything. Instead I used the /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj folder which, from past experience, I know works. I'm not sure of the user.template directory's purpose, though I'm almost certain it's related to the Casper Suite. Feel free to post if you know!