MCX for Menu Extras only applying at second login?

[stevehahn]

I've some Macs in a lab environment that are used for screen capture, and we don't want the WiFi, Bluetooth, Time Machine, Clock (etc) menu extras enabled in these machines so that our videos are 'clean.'

I'm managing these through MCX, and it works fine... but not on the first login with a new user account, only the second and subsequent logins.

The screenshot should give an idea of how I've set this, there are a few more that are set the same way as the Airport one.

Also, has anyone converted to managing menu extras with Configuration Profiles?

[stevehahn]

How about that, I didn't think it would be so easy.

I grabbed the com.apple.mcxMenuExtras file from /Library/Managed Preferences/[user] where [user] was a user account that had had the settings properly applied, and then uploaded it as 'Custom Settings' on a new configuration profile.

I then disabled the MCX on that Mac (confirmed it was gone by putting all the Menu Extras back and having them stay in place on logout/login). I pushed the configuration policy I created to the Mac and now no users have any menu extras, ever, even on first login. Woohoo!

[stevehahn]

Hmmm... might have spoken too soon. Managing these settings through the custom Configuration Profile I created definitely works better than the MCX profile I had (the configuration profile works much more reliably, in that now and then a Mac would just not bother to abide by the MCX settings and we'd still have menu bar icons; this never happens with the configuration profile).

I do still seem to have the issue with the settings not being applied until the second login on a new user account though. Create a new account, log in, all the menu extras are there; log out, log back in, they are gone. Any ideas?

[millersc]

Seeing the same problem at Computer level enforcement. So it's the OS, just why and can it be fixed....
10.9.3 and 9.4.