Question: How to add Dock plist to Root account on AutoCasperNBI created NetBoot

[Michael_Meyers]

Is there a way if I mount the drive on my NetBoot Xserve, to add a plist file specifying the Dock items seen when Macs are NetBooted? Since I can update the Casper Imaging App version by doing the same thing, I was wondering if it was possible to do it for the Dock itself.

Thanks!

Mike

[RobertHammen · Accepted solution]

Yes, you need to put a proper plist into /private/var/root/Library/Preferences.

You can do it one of two ways:

a) Terminal.app
b) a PKG file that you create in Composer. I typically enable the root user on a test machine, log in as root, configure the Dock (and also Safari - homepage) the way I want, then log out/log back in and manually create a PKG in Composer that has these two files. I then add this PKG to my AutoCasperNBI workflow. And hopefully I don't forget to disable the root user login (usually do this on a machine that's about to be re-imaged ;-)

This works, but if @bentoms][/url][/url wants to come up with an easier way to do this (since I build AutoCasperNBI images for literally a dozen or more clients, I'm often editing the plists and creating PKG files for each client), that would be awesome ;-)

--Robert

[RobertHammen · Accepted solution]

Yes, you need to put a proper plist into /private/var/root/Library/Preferences.

You can do it one of two ways:

a) Terminal.app
b) a PKG file that you create in Composer. I typically enable the root user on a test machine, log in as root, configure the Dock (and also Safari - homepage) the way I want, then log out/log back in and manually create a PKG in Composer that has these two files. I then add this PKG to my AutoCasperNBI workflow. And hopefully I don't forget to disable the root user login (usually do this on a machine that's about to be re-imaged ;-)

This works, but if @bentoms][/url][/url wants to come up with an easier way to do this (since I build AutoCasperNBI images for literally a dozen or more clients, I'm often editing the plists and creating PKG files for each client), that would be awesome ;-)

--Robert

[Michael_Meyers · Accepted solution]

Nevermind, I found it. I copied the Dock plist from an older Mavericks NetBoot (with an updated Casper Imaging App installed) to the NetBoot server, mounted the NBI on the NetBoot server, clicked Go>Go to Folder, pulled the mounted drive into the path, then added /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/. Opened right up. I did have to change the permissions to allow Everyone to Read. Thanks for the great product, Ben!

Thanks for your input too, Robert!