Managed Clients on OS X

Question

Is there an easy way to tell if a Mac is being managed by an OS X server system, and what settings are being changed (or cached) if it is being managed by an OS X server system, to make sure client notebooks are getting the proper settings from our server?

Answer 1

There are two ways.

1. Go to the Apple Menu -> About This Mac -> More Info (or just run System Profiler directly). Under the "Software" disclosure triangle is a setting called "Managed Client". If any settings are being managed, they will show up here.

2. Run mcxquery in the Terminal. If you are a managed user, that'll be enough. You can also specify flags that will have it check as though you were a different user or using a different machine.

Note that these tools may give you different results.