Default User Templates and 10.11

[rcantrell]

I work in a K12 environment with 17 schools that I service. We are most likely going to be migrating all of our Macs to El Capitan over the summer. Our machines are subject to heavy multiple student account logins using our Active Directory. Each school has it’s own preferences, dock, bookmarks, wallpaper, and other customizations that need to be captured. In the past I would just make a template user and set everything up the way I wanted and copy those changes to the /System/Library/User Template/English.lprog folder. Then I would make a package out of those changes for each school and have Casper imaging install the appropriate package during imaging.

That just doesn’t seem to work any longer.

Is there a way to fix this?

If not, is there a better way to do this? Are policies and configuration profiles the way to go from here on?

Are there other ways to easily do this?

Thanks again for all of your help with this.

Regards,
Roger

[davidacland]

Hi, in most cases profiles are the way to go as long as the setting is in a .plist file in a standard location.

For things that aren't in .plist format or in standard locations, login scripts are a good way to go. Mostly because they are easier to control and adjust later on.

Thats certainly my preferred route anyway.

[mconners]

Thanks for bringing this up Roger.

I too will be migrating this summer at our college and I have not even attempted to really play with El Capitan. From what I hear, there are several changes that I will need to make.

Personally, I have used the user template sparingly. But when I have a difficult package to create, I will usually use Composer, then within Composer after the snapshots are done, I will move the individual user pieces to the user template area by dragging the user template into Composer's window.

When finished, I start to weed out unnecessary pieces. My goal is to simply match like pieces, i.e. ~/Library/preferences to the /System/User Template/English.lproj/Library/preferences folder and so forth. All done within Composer. This allows me to put into the user template the required pieces for the application I am packaging. When completed, the package I have created will put into place at installation time, the user template components I need. I usually set the package to FEU, fill in existing user and FUT, fill in user template just to be safe. If the package could have the potential to override someone's existing user settings, I will uncheck the FEU.

So far so good. I know some folks don't believe in snapshots via Composer, but it works well for me.

Mick

[Chris_Hafner]

I'll be following this and adding soon as we too, will be working through this process for the next school year. The real question is, what 'specifically' needs to be done? We've got a few small things that aren't covered by Profiles, like the simple ability to add VPN menu extra to each user. We're currently scripting that addition, but I would prefer to have it built in. In any event, I hope to be spending much more time on this thread in the next month or so.

[kerouak]

As far as VPN goes, YOu can d/l a 'managed preference Manifest from this site, Then upload it and send out as a configuration profile.. Lots of other 'interesting' manifests there too, which may assist you further..

gluck

[bpavlov]

@Chris_Hafner Create a plist using:

defaults write ~/Desktop/com.apple.mcxMenuExtras.plist VPN.menu - bool true

The resulting PLIST can be used as a custom config payload using Casper. Or you can use something like MCXtoProfile to upload a mobileconfig.

The resulting PLIST should look something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>VPN.menu</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Do not attempt to simply copy and pate the above into a text file. Use the first command I gave you.

[kerouak]

And.. Apologies.. I should have said 'Managed Preference' as opposed to 'Config Profile'

[Chris_Hafner]

@kerouak No worries! I understood what you meant and I appreciate you updating it for the benefit of all. I've played with this and have been successful in the past. In the end I went a slightly different route. Specifically, I've modified the examples available here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=10576 because it allows for me to touch a wide variety of menu items in a less forceful manner.

That said, the pcx to profile recommendations are really great and should get everyone through until Apple get's the functionality of 'profiles' in general up to what they're moving away from.

[kerouak]

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/managedPreferenceManifests.html