Configuration Profiles and Standard Users

gskibum
Contributor III

I've recently started the crusade of changing user accounts from admin to standard. Something has come up that has left me scratching my head.

If I push a Configuration Profile that modifies the /Users/User/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file (i.e. with something like AppleShowAllExtensions=true}, this wrecks the ability of standard users to go into System Preferences and make changes to things like /System Preferences/Mouse/Scroll Direction - Natural. They can check the checkbox, but what happens is after a reboot the setting reverts back to default. In some cases the setting reverts without even rebooting.

Admin users can still make changes to things like "Scroll Direction - Natural" to their heart's content. Only standard users cannot make these changes and have them stick.

When I do a defaults read -g on a standard user account I get

Domain Apple Global Domain does not exist.

When I do a defaults read -g on an admin user account I get the expected output. I can clearly see that the .GlobalPreferences.plist file is present in both types of user accounts.

Permissions on the file are the same with standard and admin users. But for some reason the defaults read command does not work on the standard users.

Is it normal behavior for pushing such Configuration Profiles to wreck standard users from being able to make such modifications and have the changes persist between reboots? This makes no sense to me.

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