Place a script on client desktops

Question

We are looking to see if there is anyway way to push a script down to client desktops after a user logs in, we use a script to allow all of our clients to connect to a Windows shared location, but would like to know a way to put it on their desktops besides using the English.lproj folder, or if there was anyway that we could have the computer actually mount the drive and show it on the desktop that would be wonderful. We have looked around a bit but cannot seem to find anyway to do this.

Answer 1

If you are trying to get an volume to automount, why not just use MCX and manage a login item? You said the computers are bound, so the assumption is the users and groups and computers are on the OD system. If this is the case, select a group or a user and go to Preferences in WGM. When the pane comes up choose Login. Click on the Items tab and set it to manage always. Then, drag the share to the list box and check the "authenticate selected share point with user's login name and password." If you run WGM from a managed workstation this is easier. But you can do this from the server. You just need to hand edit the key from the all records inspector.
Now, if you really want to update stuff on the server, you need a little scripting work. First you need to deliver the payload to all stations and then execute a local script to place the content were you want. This is because all home folder paths are unique and it is possible to have more than one user per machine. Follow these steps as a framework.
1: Gather the payload and use the Copy Items part of ARD to send the files over to a generic location on all workstations. /tmp is a good location and I've used /tmp/ARDpush as the example.
2: Once the files are copied, use the script example below and send it to /tmp and then execute the script using the send unix command. Basically, you path it as /tmp/script.sh and set the user to root so you can get into the user home folders.
And that should do it. Items in tmp should be deleted on reboot so this is self cleaning. Here is a simple framework script. It is a simple script that identifies non-system users. If you have a default admin on the machine (and we all should), then the value is > 501 so we exclude the initial admin. If you need the changes on the admin account, then set > to 500. This works for OD and AD users since their UIDs are either > 1025 or > 1000000000.
I also used dscl as this should work on everything since 10.4. I have NOT tested this on 10.4 so keep that in mind. If you are still supporting 10.3, then dscl will need to be replaced with niutil.
---Create this script in a plain text editor and chmod 755 before sending it to the clients---
#!/bin/sh
# Define the path to the source files
filesToCopy=/tmp/ARDPush/
# Define the partial path for relative destination
whereToPlaceFiles=/Desktop/
# Get a list of user names that are above 500 or 501 if you want to exclude the admin
users=$(dscl . -list /Users uid | awk '$2 > 501 {print $1}' | sort)
for user in $users; do
# Iterate through all the users and get their home folder path
homePath=$(dscl . -read /Users/$user NFSHomeDirectory | awk '{print $2}')
# Perform the copy process
cp -R $filesToCopy $homePath$whereToPlaceFiles
done
# end of script
Hope this helps.