Hey all you mac-heads (hopefully).
I'm running a fairly small network, about 150 users, mostly Mac's and we want to upgrade them to OSX, like, yesterday. I want to join all of the computers to our 2k domain so that they have to log in when they sit down, and so that they keep seperate desktops, since users float from computer to computer at times.
I'm sure you all know about the icons that get installed on the dock when a user is first created. I want to know how to change those icons so that when a user is created, the icons that I want show up in the dock. I don't have time to be called everytime someone new logs in and creates an account on the computer to have to go and set up all of thier icons and stuff, because the vast vast majority of the users would be clueless.
Any ideas?
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I have found the answer and am posting it here in case someone wishes to know in the future.
Create you default user (the one you would administer the computer with), install all of your applications, and set the dock up exactly the way you want it. The dock is stored here:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Take that file, and copy it to:
/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Overwriting the existing file. Now, when you create a new user, they will get the exact same dock as the user you pulled the plist file from.
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One more thing that I found really nifty was a way to make the dock read-only. This will prevent users from placing items on the dock, and from removing them. In a terminal, type:
defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true
killall -HUP Dock
The killall is, of course, a way to restart the Dock program.
To reverse this to make the dock changeable, type in:
defaults delete com.apple.doc contents-immutable
Think of the defaults as a kind of registry. By the first command, you're basically adding the key 'contents-immutable' and setting it's value to 1. With the other command, you're deleting the key.
This will also be invaluable to some network admins, as I'm sure we've all had the problem of 'It was on my dock and it's gone and I can't get it back WAAAAAAAA!!!'
I'm running a fairly small network, about 150 users, mostly Mac's and we want to upgrade them to OSX, like, yesterday. I want to join all of the computers to our 2k domain so that they have to log in when they sit down, and so that they keep seperate desktops, since users float from computer to computer at times.
I'm sure you all know about the icons that get installed on the dock when a user is first created. I want to know how to change those icons so that when a user is created, the icons that I want show up in the dock. I don't have time to be called everytime someone new logs in and creates an account on the computer to have to go and set up all of thier icons and stuff, because the vast vast majority of the users would be clueless.
Any ideas?
---------------------------------------------
I have found the answer and am posting it here in case someone wishes to know in the future.
Create you default user (the one you would administer the computer with), install all of your applications, and set the dock up exactly the way you want it. The dock is stored here:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Take that file, and copy it to:
/System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Overwriting the existing file. Now, when you create a new user, they will get the exact same dock as the user you pulled the plist file from.
--------------------------------------------------------
One more thing that I found really nifty was a way to make the dock read-only. This will prevent users from placing items on the dock, and from removing them. In a terminal, type:
defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true
killall -HUP Dock
The killall is, of course, a way to restart the Dock program.
To reverse this to make the dock changeable, type in:
defaults delete com.apple.doc contents-immutable
Think of the defaults as a kind of registry. By the first command, you're basically adding the key 'contents-immutable' and setting it's value to 1. With the other command, you're deleting the key.
This will also be invaluable to some network admins, as I'm sure we've all had the problem of 'It was on my dock and it's gone and I can't get it back WAAAAAAAA!!!'
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