Dock & Screensaver Deployment Issues

andysemak
Contributor

Hello people of the nation,

I am attempting to deploy a custom dock and also a custom screensaver provided by a third party company and am in need of a little help.

First the dock,

On a second machine, I captured a dock arrangement using Composer and then deployed the DMG to my target machines (filling the user template folders). I thought this would be enough for my AD users to log in and receive the custom dock but it appears not. I have tried removing the dockfixup file but still get no joy. What am I doing wrong?

Screensaver:

An area of our University would like to display a video showreel of students work as a screensaver. They currently use a third party screensaver (Save Hollywood). I have managed to deploy this screensaver and the video files.

I then created a Managed Preference to set the times and the to select the deployed screensaver however, the 'Start After:' is greyed out and 'Flurry' screensaver is selected.

Here is the txt from Managed Preferences in System Information

com.apple.screensaver.ByHost moduleName: Value: SaveHollywood State: often Source: test (User) modulePath: Value: /Library/Screen Savers/SaveHollywood.saver/ State: often Source: test (User) idleTime: Value: 180 State: often Source: test (User)

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

3 REPLIES 3

pearlin
New Contributor III

I had a ticket open on the dock issue a few months ago. We found that using the same method you are using (making a dmg of the dock.plist/fill user template & home directory/remove dockfixup) only worked for newly created user accounts and had no effect of existing user accounts.

We ended up going with an unorthodox use of Configuration Profiles to force the dock issue. Essentially, the Configuration Profiles have the "Dock Items" configured to show a path to the application (Applications/Safari.app) and uncheck "Merge with User's Dock." You'll end up with Finder, followed by the break-line and then your desired applications in the space normally reserved for folder shortcuts. We use this in our classroom environment to make sure our OD users have the same dock. This may not be the best solution, but it does work.

andysemak
Contributor

Thanks for the reply.

I tried the Config Profiles route but all I got was folder icons showing the contents of the .app files.

Any ideas?

Not applicable

I haven't done much with screen savers, but I can definitely recommend https://github.com/kcrawford/dockutil for managing Dock items. It does require a small bit of scripting, but I've found it incredibly useful in dealing with user templates as well as existing users.