Disable the Mac Login Screen?

[musat]

Hello,
We are working on modifying our "Student Purchase Cleanup" script so that our students will be able to run it from home from Self Service. Generally speaking, it is working well. There is one area we are running into possible issues. As it currently exists, the Jamf Policy we have deletes the apps and settings it can while the student is logged in at Self Service. There are a few items that need to be managed while not logged in, so the process installs a LaunchDaemon and script that runs at boot and then restarts the MacBook.

The question: is there a way to disable the login screen in this script so that the student doesn't try logging in while this background process is running?

Thank you,
Tim Musa

[Chris_Hafner]

I don't have an answer for you on this. That said, we have a highly developed student offboarding process and I really love these discussions. I'm curious as to what needs to be done while the user is logged off?

[franton]

I did something like this quite a few years ago now. My solution was to do user work and cleanup at logout. That way loginwindow doesn't display while maintenance tasks are operating.

[musat]

Currently, the script that runs at the login screen does this:
1) "Converts" the student Standard account to Admin by deleting the account and recreating
2) Removes the MicroFocus Kanaka Directory Service plugin we use for user authentication to eDirectory
3) Removes the firmware password
4) Removes the Lanschool Configuration Profile that doesn't seem to get deleted when Lanschool is uninstalled
5) Removes Jamf agent with removeframework option

I have now found that we might be able to do some of that while the student is logged in. I had always assumed that deleting and recreating the account that was currently logged in was not a good idea, but it seems like it does work. We have also never had good luck with removing the Jamf Agent through a Self Service command, but I guess it doesn't matter if the student is logged in when we do that at boot.
I have a few test devices here at home. Maybe I will rework the process a little and see about only doing the Jamf removeframework at the reboot, and see how that goes.

Tim