Remove MCX from a select group of Macs

[Sonic84]

Hello, I've got the need to remove MCX management from a select group of 10.8 Macs. We have 39 or so MCX preferences scoped to both 10.7 and 10.8 Macs in our production environment.

These Macs will be added to a dev environment, but can't be re-imaged. The JSS in this dev environment does not have any MCX preferences set up.

Is there a way (through terminal preferable) to un-manage MCX on these Macs?

any advise would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[rockpapergoat]

remove them from the scope assigning the mcx in the first place, then try something like a:

dscl . -mcxdelete /computers/localhost

and see if that does the trick.

[richmac]

See a post i started recently with a similar issue. The response was effective in removing the MCX from the machines.

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5171

[Sonic84]

Thank you for the responses. I've successfully removed computer level management using the commands you provided. However after login with existing users, /Library/Managed Preferences/[username] is re-generated. As a troubleshooting step I removed caper from a test system and the issue of /Library/Managed Preferences/[username] coming back after a login persist. Is there any way to prevent this from coming back?

Thank you!

The script I threw together is:

#!/bin/bash

declare -x logFile="/Library/Logs/removeMCX.log"

# sends all standard output and standard error to log file.
exec >> $logFile
exec 2>&1


echo "Remove Computer Management"
echo "sudo dscl . -mcxdelete /computers/localhost"
    sudo dscl . -mcxdelete /computers/localhost
echo "rm -rf /Library/Managed Preferences"
    rm -rf /Library/Managed Preferences

echo "Remove Management for Casper"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/casper dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings
echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/casper dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings"

echo "Remove Management for NXFIX"
echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/nxfix dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/nxfix dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings


echo "Remove Management for each user"
for i in /Users/*
do
 u=`echo $i | cut -d/ -f3`
 case $u in
  Shared)
   ;;
  Temporary)
   ;;
  *)
    echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" dsAttrTypeStandard:MCXSettings
    echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" MCXSettings"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" MCXSettings
    echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" MCXFlags"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" MCXFlags
    echo "sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" cached_groups"
    sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"$u" cached_groups
    echo "rm /Users/"$u"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.MCX.plist"
    rm /Users/"$u"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.MCX.plist
    echo "sudo dscl . -mcxdelete /Users/"$u""
    sudo dscl . -mcxdelete /Users/"$u"
  ;;
 esac
done
exit 0