[10.10.4] Manage Safari Homepages and Screensaver Settings

[McAwesome]

We're working on moving one of our labs from a Deepfreeze setup to an AD setup. Most of this is figured out acceptably well. The two things that I'm having trouble figuring out are Safari settings and screensaver settings.

We need to have four homepages and potentially a set of bookmarks for all users. I've figured out setting one homepage, but it seems to not work at all with four. In Safari itself, it seems to use a unique "Tabs with favorites" setting to open multiple homepages. That would be fine if I could figure out how to set those tabs through a plist or something. What would be the best way to push out management settings on this?

The screensaver needs to be the built in Reflections with a folder we specify that is on all machines and accessible by all users. The problem is the only way I've found to manage screensaver settings is through MCX, which works but for some reason will not apply the Reflections screensaver specifically. Also Apple keeps saying that MCX will go away at some point in the future, but never seems to actually follow through with that threat. I'd love a way to set it up without using MCX if possible.

Anyone have ideas on either of those? Also game for general tips on swapping over to AD.

[jrserapio]

One way to manage the Screensaver not using MCX would be to setup configuration profiles. You can use the built in profiles in the JSS, or can create custom config profiles by editing the MobileConfig file. Its just an XML file. or if you have an MCX already, you can use this: MCXtoProfile

MCX will go away once every MCX setting can be managed through config profiles, which they are working on.

[McAwesome]

@jrserapio I got the Safari settings going via Composer, so that's taken care of. I can't find a field in configuration profiles via the JSS that seems relevant to screensavers. Can you point me in the right direction?

[gachowski]

So I think the best way to set the home page and safari's homepage behavior is with python

https://managingosx.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/accessing-more-frameworks-with-python-2/

I also think the screensaver is set the same way too, as I spent a few hours trying to get what I wanted with Casper and a few other tools and then gave up ... : )

C

[bentoms]

@McAwesome we set our homepage using a custom profile with a payload like:

<key>HomePage</key>
<string>https://macmule.com/</string>

& some other settings

For bookmarks, we're using a custom extension bar, but it's become a pita to install as per this.

[McAwesome]

@bentoms That works fine for a single page. Unfortunately, that's not what we're trying to do. I've managed to get everything I asked about other than the specific screensaver+settings figured out though.