Mac OS X and User Profiles/Kiosk

Seguer

Admittedly, I know little about Mac OS X. I've been tasked with doing some research into user profiles/alternatives, such that a user can login to a networked computer and get their profile, or when users login they always get a default guest profile that is wiped every time. I've found what appears to be some Kiosk stuff (mainly Opera and its Kiosk mode, but that limits you to a web browser), and Server Admin Tools, but they don't really do what I need.

Does anyone have any experience or know of any documentation in this area?




(I've already found stuff for Windows/Ubuntu/Linux, so don't say "but x can do it better!" thanks )

Trentus

Okay... it's been a while, I've only needed to do it once, and I don't have the documentation available. Note that I've only ever done this on 10.4 machines, and while it should work just fine on 10.5, there may be some little kink I don't know about. So, here it goes!

To set up a default user template, create a new account (I'm going to use Default as the user name for this) and set it up the way you want. Make sure you run up any programs the users are likely to use (I'm not entirely sure why you need to do this... I guess to ensure things aren't complaining about not being registered and to create their config files). Once you've done all this, log back in as someone with admin privileges.

Now we take to the command line.

Rename the original template (or just delete it... it's always nice to keep it around just in case though).

sudo mv /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj.backup

Then copy the profile you just created to the required directory, with the required name.

sudo cp -r /Users/Default /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj

It might be a good idea to check ownerships and permissions between the two files. Either do it with an ls -l or use the disk utility.

Now, give it a shot. Log in as a network user and see if you get your new default profile. If you don't, let me know and I'll see if one of the guys I used to work with can email me the documentation. Probably won't get it until monday though when they get back to the office.

Now, to make sure they get a clean profile each time they log in, you can use a shell script from Bombich's site and get it to run when the user logs in. Try refresh-default-homedir.sh or something. I've never implemented login scripts on OS X before, so I don't think I can help you much with that, but there should be a tonne of info on Bombich's site (or ask around in the forums there).

Seguer

Thanks for the info - just a note that I'm not actually implementing this, it's just research :P

Secondly, I saw that option as well, but from what I read it doesn't work on the newer versions?

Trentus

Well, we had it all going on 10.4.11 machines, and I believe the guys have rolled out Leopard since I left and still have the default profiles working. I'm not sure if they had to do anything differently though. If you like I can shoot em an email and find out. Or you could probably get an answer quicker from the forums on Bombich's site, or at least a link to some more comprehensive documentation.

Seguer

Documentation would be handier, as I'm using this for research. Proper references help

I'll take a look at the Bombich forums (weird name or weirdest name?), thanks.