"Often" setting in config profiles

davidacland
Honored Contributor II
Honored Contributor II

It's been noted that we shouldn't use the Often key in custom profiles. If we need to manage a third party plist where the "always" option is incompatible, and we need to ensure the setting is persistent, any ideas what should be used instead?

5 REPLIES 5

RobertHammen
Valued Contributor II

This is where I avoid profiles, and use a LaunchDaemon or LaunchAgent and script combo. My script can do a defaults read and change the setting if need be.

davidacland
Honored Contributor II
Honored Contributor II

I've been trying to push profiles a bit more recently. I get a feeling things are moving further in that direction. I worry that we end up with MDM being the only management method for OS X and iOS in a few years!

When I find myself working on more complex plists using plistbuddy and others, trying to kill cfprefsd, it seems profiles are a better fit.

It's just the "Once / Often / Always" thing that's bugging me.

SGill
Contributor III

Overall I've been having good luck with Profile Management files for basic and some more advanced OS X settings, but I can't imagine an environment where PM was the only control we have for our Macs...hope that's not happening!

davidacland
Honored Contributor II
Honored Contributor II

Just out of interest, is the Once setting ok to use? From memory I think it still used the often setting but just wondered what other people's thoughts were.

daz_wallace
Contributor III

Thinking out loud, with the once setting, I believe you need to specify a date and that date (at least from memory) is always in the past.

What if you were to build a 'Once' profile but with the date set way into the future?

Darren