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Re: Default new user setup

You're looking for the user template. It's located in /System/Library/User Template/ In that folder, you'll see various localizations. You probably want English.lproj. That folder is a standard user home folder template that's used to create the home folders of all new users on that machine. Whatever you do to that folder will affect all new users.

The easiest way to set it up is to create a new user, customize it however you want it, and then copy the contents of that customized user's home folder back into the user template. You will need to either delete ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/* or use Mike Bombich's script to fix those preferences (if you want to keep them). Be sure to do the copy from the command line using a tool that will preserve the permissions and ownership. I use ditto, but just because that's what I started with and that's what I'm used to. Also be sure to to chown -R the folder such that the owner is root and the group is wheel.

That's the easiest way, but the best way is to carefully think about what preferences you want to set up and what .plist files they are kept in and then use Plist Editor to put those preferences into the proper files. I'd be lying if I said I did that, but that would be the absolute best practice. It would be a good idea to at least be selective about what .plist files you move and make sure you have a reason to move them instead of just dumping the whole folder, but I'll leave figuring all that out as an exercise for the reader.

--
Ed Davis
I.T. Specialist
Penn State Outreach

On Jun 29, 2007, at 9:58 AM, Alex White wrote:

Hi,

We've been trying to find a way to have defaults set for new users that go beyond the capability of presets: things like preferences, Finder views, etc. Basically everything that we could want to customize within ~/*. What seems most sensible would be to design some sort of generic User, or at least populate a skeletal home folder with only those files that we want to be put in new user homes. At some point in the past, several OSes ago, we had such a thing, but we can't remember what it was called, nor where it lived.

Does anybody have any idea of whether this is something easily doable? Thanks!

-Alex White
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