Managed Preferences Issues

If you open Directory Utility on a client Mac, you should be able to see which Server the macs are bound to. That should be the Server to connect to with WGM to control managed preferences. The other servers could be replicas, or just bound to the OD master.

Directory Utility is installed by default as part of 10.4. It's in the Utilities folder. If it's not there, someone had to remove it. WGM, ServerAdmin, and other apps were perhaps installed as part of an image deployment? You can also use Terminal to bind clients to a server - see 'man dscl' for more info.

hth

Jeff

Hello Jeff

Simply as a reminder but In 10.4 and earlier that particular application was known as Directory Access. Perhaps OP does not realise this and is looking for something else?

I could be wrong but it seems to me OP is saying WorkGroup Manager is installed locally on each of the affected client workstations. In which case this will be locally applied MCX using the appropriate tools in WGM. This is something that's perfectly feasible and possible. I do it all the time in smaller (less than 10) OD environments when there's no need/budget for OSX Server.

If this is indeed the case then launch WorkGroup Manager on each workstation, dismiss the initial connection window - click Cancel - click on the Server Menu and select View Directories. You should then be looking at the local node with users listed. Authenticate as the local administrator and inspect what MCX has been applied to each local user. It's been a while but I'm not sure if you could apply MCX to local groups using this method? Depending on how this was set up you'd probably have to do this for each local account on each workstation in turn?

Additionally cached information for MCX may either be in/Library/Managed Preferences as well as the NetInfo Database. The NetInfo Utility can be found /Application/Utilities - the same place where you'll find Directory Access. Authenticate using the local admin and select the config container and delete anything to do with mcx that's listed. Alternatively you could use the command line utility "nicl" - similar to "dscl" - to achieve the same result. Restart afterwards into safe mode and on login empty the trash and restart again. You'd have to do this for each workstation in turn. If you have ARD available you could use this instead if you want to save yourself some leg-work?

Hopefully this will get things back on track?

Tony

Yep - Directory Access it is. Thanks for politely giving me a dope-slap 😉

And, using WGM on each machine is something that makes sense without setting up an server - hadn't thought of that.

Jeff