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Apple Remote Desktop 3 Preferences |
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Written by Philip Rinehart
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Friday, 18 August 2006 |
Apple Remote Desktop 3 is an incredibly powerful tool. Some preferences are hidden, and can be enabled with the use of the defaults write command.
Many interesting preferences can be used, to affect the operation of Apple Remote Desktop. Here some of the more interesting preferences stored in each users com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist file.
| Name | Type | Description |
| ComputerDatabase | Array | Computers in the “All Computers” list |
| ListDatabase | Array | User defined regular and smart lists |
| ScannerLists | Dictionary | Scanner lists |
| SavedTasks | Array | Saved tasks |
Most of these preferences will not be set using the command line, but with a script or other information, you could
What are some of the hidden preferences for per user preferences? As noted on MacOSXHints, you can enable the debug menu by doing the following:
defaults write com.apple.RemoteDesktop IncludeDebugMenu -bool TRUE
But, wait there are more!
Two preferences can be set per user:
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transition
| Number
| Defines multi-observe screen transition
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showShortUserName
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Boolean
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Define user name display behavior
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As an example, set the shortUserName preferences in the following way:
defaults write com.apple.RemoteDesktop showShortUserName -bool TRUE
Moving on to some other preferences, the ARDAgent has preferences that can be set at the global level in the com.apple.ARDAgent.plist file.
| Name | Type | Description |
| AgentLogLevel | Number | Amount of logging to syslog.conf |
| AdminCachePolies | Array | Report cache build settings |
| AdminContactInfoList | Dictionary | Administrator console entries |
| ServerContactInfoList | Dictionary | Task server entries |
The Agent Log level is the most interesting preference, providing more complete information when troubleshooting ARD.
The last set of preferences are stored in com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist
Many of these preferences will not be used in a standard configuration. Many apply to VNC behavior, as well as Multicast settings.
| Name | Type | Description |
| VNCOnlySendMainScreen | Boolean | Send only main display |
| VNCAlwaysAskForPermission | Boolean | Like a permanent guest mode |
| VNCPort | Number | VNC network port |
| VNCTimeBetweenUpdates | Number | Time in milliseconds between screen updates |
| VNCNoRegister | Boolean | Register with Bonjour |
| ARD_MulticastAllowed | Boolean | Use multicast for file copies |
| ARD_Non_EN0_MulticastAllowed | Boolean | Use multicast on network interfaces other than EN0 |
Note that most of these are boolean values and use the defaults command as shown earlier. An important piece of information, the global preferences usually require writing the full path. As an example:
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent AgentLogLevel
This command will return the level of logging that is sent to the system.log.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 30 October 2006 )
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