2022-05-10

For several personal and private reasons, I will no longer be able to actively maintain this repo.

This repo will be marked read only from now on. No further support will be available.

Carl.

meecxprofile

Pronounced meeseeks

This is a re-imagined version of the MCX To Profile project by Tim Sutton.

Requirements

This version should be entirely self sufficient if the pyobjc package is not installed, although some TCC permissions such as Full Disk may need to be provided to defaults.

This has been tested with Python 3.9.6 and pyobjc version 7.3; some basic testing has been done on macOS 10.13 and macOS 11.5.2.

Python 3 is required.

Support

Support is provided "as is". This is not an exact replication of the original MCX To Profile project, but most functionality should exist.

Usage

The prebuilt meecxprofile is found in the dist folder of this repo.

Three arguments are required:

./meecxprofile --identifier [identifier] --org-name [org name] --display-name [display name]

Optional (but mandatory) arguments:

Either --plist [domain] or --ds-obj [ds object] are required. A file path can also be provided with the --plist argument.

Multiple property list files/domains can be processed, simply provide them as a space seperated string. Correct character escaping or quoting will be required if there are spaces in the file path/domain.

For example:

--plist com.apple.Dock /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist "com.example.Pickle Rick.jerry"

NOTE: There are no specific flags to indicate which user (any or current) to pull the preferences from. It is recommended to use an explicit file path to either ~/Library/Preferences (current user) or /Library/Preferences (any user).

Optional arguments:

--desc [description] to set the profile description
--removable to set if the profile can be removed by users
--keys provide a set of specifc keys (when used with --plist) or preference domain and values (when used with --ds-obj)
--freq set the management frequency using (choices are always or once, default is always)
-o/--output specify the filename to write profile data to (will always have the .mobileconfig file extension), default behavior is to print to stdout

Filtering

It's possible to filter specific preferences that you want instead of returning the whole set of preferences.

Filtering Property List

When the --plist argument is specified, simply provide the relevant preference key to filter. Items that don't match the specified keys will be discard from any preference domain being processed.

For example, to filter the preferences in com.apple.dock so only region, tilesize, and autohide are kept:

--keys region tilesize autohide

Filtering MCX from Directory Services

When the --ds-obj argument is specified, provide either the preference domain, or preference domain and preference keys using this format: domain=preference. Multiple preference keys can be supplied for the one preference domain by using a comma seperated string: domain=preference1,preference2,preference3.

It is also possible to filter by specific preference domain, simply supply the preference domain using this format: domain=

Directory Services Syntax Examples

com.apple.MCX= will discard any preference domain that is not com.apple.MCX
com.apple.MCX=com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin will filter the preference domain com.apple.MCX and discard any preference key that is not com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin
com.apple.MCX=com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin,com.apple.cachedaccounts.WarnOnCreate will filter the preference domain com.apple.MCX and discard any preference key that is not com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin or com.apple.cachedaccounts.WarnOnCreate

Source sample (represented as native Python dict type) before filtering by com.apple.MCX=com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin,com.apple.cachedaccounts.WarnOnCreate:

{'com.apple.MCX': {'Forced': [{'mcx_preference_settings': {'com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin': True,
                                                           'com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreatePHDAtLogin': False,
							   'com.apple.cachedaccounts.WarnOnCreate': False}}]},
 'com.apple.dock': {'Forced': [{'mcx_preference_settings': {'AppItems-Raw': [],
                                                            'DocItems-Raw': [],
                                                            'contents-immutable': False,
                                                            'static-only': False},
                                'mcx_union_policy_keys': [{'mcx_input_key_names': ['AppItems-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'static-apps',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True},
                                                          {'mcx_input_key_names': ['DocItems-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'static-others',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True},
                                                          {'mcx_input_key_names': ['MCXDockSpecialFolders-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'MCXDockSpecialFolders',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True}]}]}}

Source sample (represented as native Python dict type) after filtering by com.apple.MCX=com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreateAtLogin,com.apple.cachedaccounts.WarnOnCreate:

{'com.apple.MCX': {'Forced': [{'mcx_preference_settings': {'com.apple.cachedaccounts.CreatePHDAtLogin': False}}]},
 'com.apple.dock': {'Forced': [{'mcx_preference_settings': {'AppItems-Raw': [],
                                                            'DocItems-Raw': [],
                                                            'contents-immutable': False,
                                                            'static-only': False},
                                'mcx_union_policy_keys': [{'mcx_input_key_names': ['AppItems-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'static-apps',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True},
                                                          {'mcx_input_key_names': ['DocItems-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'static-others',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True},
                                                          {'mcx_input_key_names': ['MCXDockSpecialFolders-Raw'],
                                                           'mcx_output_key_name': 'MCXDockSpecialFolders',
                                                           'mcx_remove_duplicates': True}]}]}}

Build Your Own

Use the build.sh script to build your own. The generated file is output to dist/meecxprofile.

To use a specific Python 3 shebang:

./build.sh --python="/usr/local/munki/python"

Meecxprofile

Install / Use

README