User preferences Deployment F.U.T .. What's your thoughts on this..

[kerouak]

We have a large nimber of 'shared' macs across Campus..

So, I was thinking the following for the above..

1. Setting all Prefs on a clean OS for multiple Apps
2. Copying all user set Prefs into a hidden folder at imaging time (They would reside there permanently)
3. Script a 'copy' command to copy all the .plists to the relevant users prefs folder on login.

This would save me "FUT and FEU" and large startup scripts / Policies etc.
And, This should dramatically cut down on login time.

What do you all think?

[roiegat]

In theory it should work. Although you might run into issues when you want to update your preferences for whatever reason in that you need to now make sure it takes place in that hidden folder.

Have you tried recording time to login with both methods? Would only use this method if there was a huge time difference.

[RobertHammen]

Managing prefs is so '00's, look to configuration profiles if you can.

[stevevalle]

You could always cache the policy to the computer. That way the machine is not relying on the network to deploy the plist file. Login times should also be quicker this way!

[daz_wallace]

I'd agree with @RobertHammen

Anything that lives in /Library/Preferences or ~/Library/Preferences and is a .plist file (e.g. standard Apple developer guidelines for preference storage) should be managed using profiles.

If it needs to always be set, use the custom payload in the JSS. If the preference needs to be 'set once', you can use MCXtoProfile and upload the result to Casper.

If setting preferences this way is not possible (looking at you Adobe...) then you may have to dump files at login, in which case you can either manually script a login policy to copy the files over (but you need to ensure they are permission'd correctly) or possibly introduce another solution like Outset.

Last option is to reconsider what you're managing. Is it just personal preference (in which case, who honestly cares e.g. how default Finder windows display content?) or is it honestly required?

Hope that helps!

Darren

[kitzy]

Last option is to reconsider what you're managing. Is it just personal preference (in which case, who honestly cares e.g. how default Finder windows display content?) or is it honestly required?

This is an incredibly important distinction to make.

In fact, this is one of the very few things @gregneagle and I wholeheartedly agree on, which is really saying something. source