Finder Sidebar Preferences in 10.9

[pinnockt]

Hi,

We're new to Casper, so we might be making an obvious mistake, but we are having trouble setting Finder sidebar preferences for our users.

We have a trolley of MacBook Pros that our students log into with AD accounts (not mobile accounts). The students' OS X home folders are mapped to their network home folders. We would like the students' home folder to automatically appear in the sidebar so that it's easy for them to tell OS X where to save their files (achieved by ticking the home folder icon underneath Favorites in the Finder Sidebar Preferences). At the same time we'd also like the hard drives and connected servers to appear on the desktop.

We've attempted to capture a DMG with those settings turned on, ticked "Fill user templates" and "Fill existing user home directories" and deployed the package. Casper Remote tells us that the package deploys correctly, but it has no effect - the preferences don't set for the student.

We're running OS X 10.9.2. Are we missing something obvious?

Thanks!

Tim.

[Clean]

Hi Tim, and welcome aboard!

I think you will have better luck setting the finder preferences through configuration profiles (and not via packages or policy). We had a lab with almost the exact same requirements, and we were able to accomplish it all with configuration profiles.

Hope this helps!

[obi-k]

How about using Composer, and creating a package for the User environment?

On a Mac with your desired Finder preferences:

1. Open Composer
2. Click New at the top left
3. At the pull down, select "User Environment"
4. Select Finder Preferences and Sidebar Preferences (Basically .plists)
5. Create it as a DMG instead of a Package
6. Upload to Casper Admin and select Fill user templates and Fill Existing user home directories

[pinnockt]

Thanks mvu, we have tried that method, and unfortunately the client seems to totally ignore it!

Chris, which configuration profile would you use? Or do you use Custom settings and upload a plist?

Thanks,
Tim.

[jshipman]

Hey Tim!

Did you find a solution to this yet? I want to remove the Shared section from the sidebar and I can't seem to get a policy to work. I tried mvu's solution and still couldn't get it to stick. I also tried to package the sidebar plist and that doesn't work either. I'd love to use a configuration profile, but the Finder payload doesn't have any sidebar settings in it. Any push in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Jessie

[bentoms]

@jshipman, I think there is a Finder plist key that you can set via MCX that will hide the shared section.

[ronb]

I must be missing something obvious. I used Composer and the user environment to capture Finder and sidebar preferences, but when I used that package, the sidebar items (Home icon, Document icon, etc) were tied to the account I created the package on, not the user. Any ideas?
I had used the same steps mentions by mvu in his remarks above.

[davidacland]

The sidebar preference file has a load of static paths in the XML. You can deploy one that doesn't have user specific data but I haven't seen a dynamic user home value successfully deployed.

[ronb]

Well that makes sense. I was wondering about that, but since these options were in Composer, I was assuming JAMF had a trick to circumvent that. Assumptions always burn me.

[Poseiden951]

I can't seem to get anything to work for this. It's driving me crazy!

[davidacland]

It might be worth trying the script in this thread https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=13639 it's a bit like dockutil in its behaviour and works really well.

[daz_wallace]

+1 for my colleague @davidacland's suggestion.

I used this at a site yesterday and it worked great.

Darren