Setting up the dock for multiple users

[mattwolfmatt]

I am setting up a MIDI Lab with five computers, to be used by many students with a unique user name. My IT dept has given me administrative privilege since they no nothing about Macs and basically just told me "you set everything up. We're not touching them."

I spent hours installing software, including Finale 2010, getting the MIDI set up just right, which can be a tedious process. The problem is, when a student signs on to any of the computers, finale doesn't show up in the dock, and the MIDI settings need to be setup. Once the studnet sets themselves up correctly on one computer, the settings only apply there. Should they end up on a different computer the next day, they need to do it all over again!

Is there some administrative trick to making sure the settings I change, apply to all users?

They are iMacs running Leopard.

Thanks.

 

[devburke]

I’m not sure exactly how to do this in a lab where user accounts apply to multiple computers, but I’ll tell you how to do it on a single computer and hopefully you can figure it out from there.

There’s no way to automatically do this (unless it can be done with Automator or AppleScript, I dunno…maybe folder actions), but I think the following method should work (I haven’t done it, so I can’t promise). When you’re logged in as a user with the dock set up how you’d like it, navigate to ~/Library/Preferences and find the file called “com.apple.dock.plist”. Copy that.

Where you paste it depends on your needs exactly. Are you trying to apply this setting to already existing accounts, or to the template for new accounts?

To apply the setting to the template, copy the file into /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/ (note: by default, you don’t have access to any folders under “User Template”, but if you open “Get Info” for it and scroll to the bottom and click the lock, you can change the permissions to give yourself Read and Write permissions for each folder, although I’d recommend changing them back when you’re done).

If you’re trying to do it for preexisting users, you’d want to do the same thing, only to /Users/(Username)/Library/Preferences instead. I’m not sure if you can give yourself permission to write to their folders, even as an admin. You can try. If not, maybe you can do it in the Terminal with sudo. Someone with more knowledge on the subject would have to say. You could always send them the file and have them manually copy it in, but that’s kind of a lame solution.