User Access & System Preferences

[MacVault]

A couple days ago I reformatted my new MacBook, setup an Administrator account and two user accounts. After setting all the preferences, etc in the Administrator account I was annoyed to find a few things that were configurable by the user accounts, such as Bluetooth discoverability, Bluetooth On/Off, etc. Is there any way in OS X to administratively manage/lock down various things in the system? Isn't there any way to automatically configure accounts with pre-defined system settings, etc, as is possible in Windows through Active Directory and Group Policy Objects, OUs, etc??? This seems like a "must have" for OS X, or any good OS for that matter.

 

[mkrishnan]

If you bump the user down from a "Standard" user to a "Managed" user, you should get what you want. Ironically, it's placed under "Parental Controls" for Finder and for the System, but nonetheless, from there you can lock the Dock, limit applications, prevent the user from accessing advanced system preferences, etc, etc. You should be able to get a good degree of lockdown from there.

 

[islandmonusvi]

Don't forget to set-up a 'virgin' account for "Trouble" with admin privileges.
This is a life saver if your main account gets corrupted.
Just log in via 'Trouble'... as if nothing ever happened !

 

[~Kat~]

Rather than start a new thread.....

I added 2 new users. One of them would like to use Photoshop with their account however, many fonts are missing. Obviously, the default application runs so fonts are missing. How do I go about making all fonts accessible for all users? I suppose I'm asking for not only PS but for text programs like Word and Tex-Edit?

She has complained that Photoshop is very tempermental where as mine (on the Admin account) isn't. Thanks Apple.

 

[mkrishnan]

The basic answer to the font question, I believe is to move the fonts from ~/library/fonts to /library/fonts.

 

[jsw]

The basic answer to the font question, I believe is to move the fonts from ~/library/fonts to /library/fonts.

Or, for those less Terminal-inclined, open the Fonts folder in each user's Library folder, and move those fonts to the "Macintosh HD"*->Library folder, then use Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility to repair permissions.

This is best done when no other apps are running, and it can save some disk space, too, as often fonts are duplicated.


* Or whatever you've named your boot disk.

 

[~Kat~]

Thank you both, I rarely use Terminal.

I went in NewUser/Library/Font but it's empty. Library/FontCollections isn't.