Comments on: 7 Workgroup Manager Tricks to Keep your Managed Macs in Line

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:41:07 +0000

Sorry for the delay David to reply…It didn’t work. as you said in theory it should work. The bookmarks bar just display the default bookmark on it. I do not know what else to try or what in doing wrong

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:47:18 +0000

@ Jason,

It looks like you can adjust Safari bookmarks by importing the bookmarks.plist file into Workgroup Manager. It will show up towards the top as “Bookmarks”. Before you put in the .plist file, set the bookmarks you want. I haven’t tested it yet but in theory it should work. I’ll let you know after I test it.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:45:08 +0000

Hi David,
thx for that your info. I was wondering if you know how to set the Safari bookmarks using workgroup manager. I already tried doing it by copying the preferences for the entire application and/or only using the bookmark.plist from ~/Library/Safary/Bookmarks.plist
None of my techniques work.

Thanks

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:08:26 +0000

@ Ann:

They are located in ~/Library/Preferences and will need to be manually imported into Workgroup Manager.

By: Ann Curran

Ann Curran — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:49:00 +0000

I can’t seem to find the com.apple.systempreferences.plist
com.apple.universalaccess.plist on the list. Do they need to be imported from somewhere?

By: Ann Curran

Ann Curran — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:42:28 +0000

Thanks David! I’ll give it a try.

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:52:59 +0000

@ Ann,

Sorry you had to wait for a response but controlling the mouse via Workgroup Manager is not going to be an easy one but it’s possible.

First, install the Property List Editor from Apple – I can’t find the direct link but I do remember that it’s on either the OS X Server Install DVD or part of the Admin Tools package. Alternatively, it’s bundled with XCode.

You’re going to have to play with the preference files:

com.apple.systempreferences.plist
com.apple.universalaccess.plist

My suggestion is to take the standard settings, tweak the mouse settings the way you like and note the differences in the .plist files. Look at the date/time modified to give you a hint for which ones are changing.

Once you’ve got them set and know which .plists are affected, in Workgroup manager, Highlight the group you want it to affect. Then under the Details pane, click the plus sign and import those .plist files. You’ll also be able to edit the plist files through Workgroup Manager’s editor.

This is a much more advanced way of working with Workgroup Manager but it’s very powerful and can be used for all sorts of settings.

By: Ann Curran

Ann Curran — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:00:33 +0000

I was able to turn off the dashboard by following your directions above, but I am still wondering if there is a way to setup the mouse preferences through Workgroup Manager. Does anyone know?

By: Ann Curran

Ann Curran — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:43:18 +0000

Is there anyway to setup the mouse preferences for users? For instance, we want the right click to work as the secondary button and turn off the dashboard for the center button.

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:22:15 +0000

Unfortunately OS X views the speakers/headphones as one Built-In output.

You may be able to get around this with USB headphones rather than standard 1/8″ jack headphones, and making this the default output instead. Then lock the Sound preference pane to keep users from changing the settings.

By: Lee Buescher

Lee Buescher — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:54:42 +0000

Any thoughts on disabling speakers on the computers while retaining the use of headphones? We have several macs in student classrooms, and would like to disable the speakers, but allow kids to use headphones.

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:05:18 +0000

Are you using the Network Home folders over wireless? If so, that’s exactly why Apple recommends you don’t do that. Even over a wired network, with enough traffic Network Homes can be sluggish.

What you should do is have local home folders, where the home folder resides on the machine itself, rather than a server. Do note that the first login will take a while as the home folder is being built. Subsequent logins will be much faster.

What you can do next for the students is create either a network folder that they can store documents in – that mounts on login, or sync just a particular folder (say, Documents).

By: John Moreno

John Moreno — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:04:30 +0000

We have serious performance issues and very slow login wait times on our network. We only need a home folder for each student so they can save documents no matter where they are on the network. Can all other user profile settings be turned off? Thanks!

By: David Balogh

David Balogh — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:55:09 +0000

Jan – Try the following:

- Make sure the Managed Machine is properly attached to the OS X Server.
- Double check the ethernet address is correct
- Make sure the machine is in the appropriate group that has the setting.
- Log out of the machine and log back in (it may take two or three tries for it to sync up)
- Be sure to be using Safari, Firefox won’t listen to the settings.

Also, make sure you have the latest Server Admin Tools update – Apple will release updates for this around the same time they release the OS X Server updates.

If it still wont work, I’d check with Apple Support to see if there’s a known issue about this.

By: Jan Rootham

Jan Rootham — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:35:40 +0000

I cannot get the “Set Home Page” feature to work in OSX Server 10.5.8 with all the latest updates. It seems to have no effect on my group preferences. Any ideas?