keyboards, timezones and defaults users

[DirkM2012]

Hi everybody,

We have offices all around the world and I was wondering how you guys support different keyboard layouts and time zones. I like the option in Apple Setup to select the preferred keyboard layout, create a new user and pick a time zone but it messes up the computer name and some other settings. If I leave Apple Setup disabled then I have to give the local admin account to all users to go in and create their user account, log off and back on and finally go settings to adjust everything.

I was wondering how those of you who support multiple countries handle the default user creation with local keyboards and regional settings.

Thanks,
Dirk

[jarednichols]

Handle these changes with a smart configuration. Name it with the country code. For instance we have US and UK setups. UK sets timezone to GMT and sets the units to GBP and 24 hour time, for instance.

While our base configuration is the same for everyone, these little changes get slid into the smart configurations that actually get deployed.

[DirkM2012]

Thanks for the reply. For me that would mean to manage about 50 timezone/keyboard combinations and our support staff would still have to use a manual process to set up the user (if not using Apple Setup). I wil keep playing with the options to see if there is a better way.

[jarednichols]

I wonder if instead you could create a small app that launches at first login that will prompt the user for their timezone and keyboard layout. Timezone is easy to script, keyboard layout may be a little more tricky. See if this jogs some ideas: http://superuser.com/questions/301305/change-keyboard-layout-to-dvorak-from-command-line-on-mac

[nessts]

Here are some options that i have been implementing. 1. you can with the 10.7 setup assistant remove the parts you don't want to run and get it down to essentially country, keyboard, and timezone. Then replace the 10.8 setup assistant with the 10.7 one. I have a firstboot script that then writes the .AppleSetupDone because that part is tied in with the account creation or one of the other parts i removed. I then have another launchdaemon that waits for all of that to finish, and sets up an autologin user that prompts the user to start vpn if remote, and once connected to vpn prompts them for their AD acct name and pw. or if i change the flag for local accounts it will prompt them for a local account name, pw etc and create the account, it then logs out the autologin acct and removes those preferences, the problem with this is that the 10.7 scrolling video runs at the end saying its a Lion system. Most users don't read the real important stuff, but they tend to catch things like that.

1. i can disable the 10.8 setup assistant and i created 3 applescript apps that i can run in a launchagent so that when the user logs in if their local .setupdone file is not set each one pops open system preferences for keyboard, region, and timezone, problem with this method is you need to be running as root and the case i had for this the users are all engineers/admins so it was not a big deal. Problems with this also are that Apple seems to enjoy screwing with applescript from one version to the next so applescripts you write for 10.7 just don't work on 10.8, or ones you write for 10.8 work but throw some errors that may cause more problems than they are worth. So i bagged this case.

2. you could let apple setup assistant run, and then have a launchdaemon running that waits for it to be done and remove the locally created account from the admin group with
   dseditgroup -o edit -d acctname admin
   which may be the most simple approach if you only need local accounts. The following command gets you the name of the account

id -P 501 |awk -F: '{print $1}'
test

if you like any of these i can share some more details of a few of the key things you will need to do. create launchdaemons, some processes to wait for setup assistant to quit etc.

[jarednichols]

+1 Todd. That's some good info.