Multiple users in a class room enviroment / deleting home folders after use

Question

Hi,
I'm administrating a class room environment, where my students log on using Active Directory accounts. I would like to clean up the home folders after the users log out, so their profiles would be reseted when they log in next time. Is there any way to achieve this?
any advice is appreciated
thanks,
M

Answer 1

The usual way is :-
Create an account say "default".
Login with "default" and set up that account exactly how you want all the users to get. For example dock settings and browser home page etc.
Tidy up the account, empty the trash, delete recent servers, clear browser caches etc.
Login as root
Delete the keychain of the "default" account.
Copy all the home folders of default to /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj
Run repair permissions
Now all new users will get these home folders and settings when they logon.
Now all you have to do is use a script that deletes the home folders of a students when they logout
so they then get the default set when they login again.
Here is an example of one :-
#!/bin/sh
rm -r /Users/$1
N.B. OS X uses the variable $1 for the currently logged in user.
The easiest way to get this running when they logout out, is to use Mike Bombich's loginwindow manager. It complains a bit when you open it to set it up, but it still does the job with login and logout scripts.
Also have a look at this thread on edu_geek :-
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/72443-how-create-os-x-default-profile-template -bind-ad-10-5-10-6-a.html