JimmyA

Just a selection of images from SBB's Twitter feed.

I wish I could end our contracts with them without having to pay for (and endure) another year.

That's what I've had to do too - remove the folders you mention from the sidebar.

Create a local user (DEFAULT in this example) make any configuration changes and run the following in terminal as an admin user: rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Caches/* rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Keychains/login.keychain rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Preferences/SDMHelpData rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/* rm -rf /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj ditto -V /Users/DEFAULT /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/ chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/ du -sh /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj

I've tried: Customising the sidebar then copying the user's com.apple.sidebar.plist through Profile Manager's Custom Settings applied to a device group, it doesn't deploy. I've tried removing every entry possible from the sidebar in case there was a reference to this specific user stopping it from working - still no joy. I've tried using plistbuddy and defaults to edit the sidebar. plistbuddy can only modify unloaded plists due to preference caching (https://macmule.com/2014/02/07/mavericks-preference-caching/) editing using defaults didn't work as it doesn't support nested keys. I might try to edit the plist offline though Apple recommend using the defaults command. Some useful information here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/macenterprise/YgJnfqpyKNs For now I have created a default user profile with most of the sidebar entries removed then taken a NetRestore image, I want to add mapped drives to the sidebar though so I've not been able to achieve what I wanted to.

Any ideas on how to resolve these issues would be greatly appreciated.

I have a suite of 14 iMacs and 1 MacBook Pro to deploy. I have enrolled them into Profile Manager and configured payloads to set up the Macs as I want them. They join Active Directory fine by naming each Mac under System Preferences/Sharing then enrolling them - the Directory configuration does the rest and puts them in the correct Organisational Unit. I am then able to sign in using AD accounts and access file shares. Network Mounts in locations other than the Desktop Network Mounts configured under Login Items only appear on the desktop so users are unable to access them via the File > Save dialog in applications. Manually dragging shares from the desktop into Favourites on Finder's sidebar makes them accessible via File > Open and Save but I can't expect users to do this. I attempted to add the shares by creating a Custom Setting payload and uploading com.apple.sidebarlists.plist from a user profile set up with the shares under Favourites, this didn't work. My next thought was creating a bash script to map the drives and create links under the user's Documents folder, useful as this is the default folder for File > Open/Save. #!/bin/bash mkdir /Volumes/Temporary mkdir /Volumes/Resources mount_smbfs "smb://fs1/Temporary" /Volumes/Temporary ln -s /Volumes/Temporary ~/Documents mount_smbfs "smb://fs1/Resources" /Volumes/Resources ln -s /Volumes/Resources ~/Documents This runs fine when executed from the Terminal using sh Login_Students.sh Under Profile Manager's Login Window options I uploaded the script and set up a Custom Settings payload as advised, setting ~root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist's EnableMCXLoginScripts to true and MCXScriptTrust to our domain name, I also tried anonymous and authenticated. The script does not run on either admin or standard user accounts. I created a file com.mapdrives.plist under /Library/LaunchAgents: Label com.mapdrives.plist Program /Users/Shared/Login_Students.sh RunAtLoad This executes the Login_Students.sh script to map drives saved in /Users/Shared and works fine for admin users but not for standard users - I've made sure that the file has execute permissions using chmod +X and chmodded it to 777 as a test so all users have full access to it - still no joy, check the permissions in Finder and can see no issue there. Image Deployment Created a NetRestore image on an iMac patched up to date and with Microsoft Office, Apple Pages, Numbers, Keynote and Garageband (with all samples and instruments) on it. It deploys fine to other iMacs but occasionally displays an error message when shutting down on a MacBook Pro - "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button." Created a default user profile before taking an image so that first run guides for applications do not appear nor does the registration details window on Office applications. I did the following: rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Caches/* rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Keychains/login.keychain rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Preferences/SDMHelpData rm -rf /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/* rm -rf /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj ditto -V /Users/DEFAULT /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/ chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/ du -sh /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj When a user logs in for the first time and their profile is created some items in Finder's sidebar such as Documents pointed to the account I created the default user profile from so I removed them all apart from the home folder and Applications. All folders in the user profile other than Public have their ownership set to the DEFAULT user so are inaccessible.