Dock Icons don't work in Mavericks

[mintzd01]

Hi All,

I am in the process of working through a new Mavericks build and have run into some issues with dock icons that are delivered by policy.

When I run the policy on the new Mavericks machines the dock reloads it self but has non of the desired dock icons in place. However after a re boot they appear.

I have tested the same policy on a 10.7.5 machine in one of the labs and it works fine.

Casper is on version 9.21

Any ideas?

[tnielsen · Accepted solution]

I know what it is, and oh man is this annoying. Basically, the dock caches itself so even after a reload it loading the cached plist. Sort of like the .lockfiles in lion and mountain lion.

As to fixing it, well I do know logging out and in works but it's possible to relaunch finder and the dock at the same time to reset it. I'm not sure, but that's the root of it. Killall Dock wont reload what you think it does anymore.

EDIT: the following command, run before updating the dock, will work: killall cfprefsd

[GabeShack]

I've also noticed the info it saves when you capture dock items in mavericks is different. On 10.6.-10.8 is used to be file://localhost/Applications/"Name of App.app".
In 10.9 it is just file://Applictaions/"Name of App.app".
Not sure if this makes a difference but maybe the dock item needs to be captured in a Mavericks based system to deploy on a Mavericks based system.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[mintzd01]

Thanks tnielsen,

[tnielsen]

No problem, I'm getting used to all the Mavericks nuances myself.

[#6]

Dockutil 1.1.4 seems to work in Mavericks, at least with a currently logged-in user account.

[mm2270]

FWIW, the latest version of dockutil (version 1.1.4) seems to work just fine in Mavericks for adding icons to the Dock, and, I'd argue its a better more flexible approach than replacing an entire plist file. That version of the utility added a function to restart cfprefsd before restarting the Dock, which is the daemon that is causing the preferences to be cached so stubbornly in Mavericks.

Info here:
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProduct.html?id=203&view=info

Hehe. @pete_c beat me to it by a minute. :)

[donmontalvo]

As the developer of dockutil sits 15 feet from me, this link might be helpful:

https://github.com/kcrawford/dockutil/issues/13

[donmontalvo]

where's the delete-my-duplicate-post button? :)

[mm2270]

@donmontalvo - Uhm, I'm not sure I understand. The link goes to a thread of someone complaining it doesn't work in 10.9 and Kyle Crawford responding that it does. What was the point of the link? Just a confirmation that it works with Mavericks?

[donmontalvo]

Pointing to the right place to post any docutil issues.

[bentoms]

@donmontalvo Can you give him a big Thankyou hug from me.

Dockutil is awesome!

[tnielsen]

So annoying that I just migrated to Casper from using dockutil.. now I'm going back. Maybe I just won't manage people's docks...

[mm2270]

Funny, many of us started with Casper's built in Dock management and migrated over to dockutil because we wanted more flexibility. Casper Suite's add dock icon function is pretty basic and quite frankly, poor when it comes to setting up a full Dock. Adding one icon here or there, fine, but anything more than that and its frustrating to use. Sorry JAMF.

[donmontalvo]

Casper is a great suite but like any solution, there are holes, so these third party solutions are definitely a good thing to have handy.

<cough-cough-Packages-instead-of-Composer-cough-cough>

[scottb]

10.9 also caches pref's differently. This page covers it somewhat.
It looks like 1.1.4 covers that bit.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20130908042828630

[donmontalvo]

@boettchs Interesting, the article is actually being discussed over at the MacEnterprise list, here is the Google Groups link, worthwhile reading:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/macenterprise/preferences$20caching/macenterprise/YgJnfqp...

Don

[scottb]

Thanks Don. I've been playing around today with 1.1.4 and it's working pretty well - even though 10.9.x isn't mentioned specifically, it uses "cfprefsd".

[scottb]

Apologies if it's been beaten to death. I had someone ask me about this today and I had just read this bit from TKessler (Macfixit) and it's a simple way to re-cache things:

...For example, if you would like to change the Dock's position setting using a text editor, then you can open it and modify the "pinning" and "orientation" keys, and then save the changes. Next, you can run either of the following two commands to read out the Dock's plist file and re-cache them. Do this before relaunching the Dock, and the settings will be properly implemented and used when the program loads: defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock defaults read com.apple.dock

[cwaldrip]

Just noticed that dockutil was updated to 2.0. Not sure if everyone using it is aware.