Trying to enable the built in guest account on 10.8 & 10.9 via terminal

[spowell01]

As topic states, I swear i had this working at one point...but now with more testing it appears to not take affect. When it was working, i was able to simply type guest in as the username and leave the password blank. Anyone else getting this accomplished?

This is what we are using
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow GuestEnabled -bool YES

Also tried these two lines, but they fail on my 10.9 machine
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleFileServer guestAccess -bool YES
defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server AllowGuestAccess -bool YES

Now when i look at the guest account in system preferences, it shows as sharing only....Any advice is appreciated.

[jdziat]

You're going to want to set com.apple.MCX.plist - > DisableGuestAccount -> False.

[spowell01]

Thanks jdziat, but that would involve using MCX, and we aren't using those settings at all. I had this working when we were deploying our login window settings via a config profile and had the enable guest checkbox selected. since the login window config profiles were buggy with the restart/shutdown options I moved form the profile to a script that essentially manages the same settings.

[bentoms]

@spowell01 I believe the login window config profile issues have been solved with 9.21.

[spowell01]

I believe your correct as well Bentoms, at least I heard that from my jamf rep.....I actually tried to update our JSS to 9.2.1 last night. Update failed and i had to revert back to my vm snapshot before the upgrade attempt. I was planning on trying the upgrade again this afternoon. If successful my thoughts were to make another login window profile with JUST the checkbox to enable the guest account.