Mass Deployment

Refreshing Managed Client Cache

Deleting the contents of the /Library/Managed Preferences directory is definitely one way to refresh your managed preferences cache in Mac OS X, but there have been commands specifically designed to clear the cache for each version of Mac OS X. By OS, these include the following:

  • 10.6 – mcxrefresh – You can use this command (in /usr/bin) to refresh managed preferences
  • 10.6 also has a ManagedClient binary in /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/MacOS/ManagedClient. When run with a -f option, ManagedClient will force updates.
  • 10.5 has a binary called mcxd located in /System/Library/CoreServices/mcxd.app/Contents/MacOS/mcxd which can also be run with a -f option
  • 10.4 has a binary called MCXCacher, stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/mcxd.app/Contents/Resources/MCXCacher which also supports the same -f option.

There are a number of other ways to go about this. If you have some that you use that I did not mention please feel free to add a comment.