Comparison between MAC and PC management at work (4)

"Plist to registry" and "profile to Group Policy"

"Plist for registry"

The Registry, which records the encrypted database of all system and software configuration information. each item is organized by a key-Value Pair in a tree structure. earlier in the morning, Windows did not have a unified registry management. INI text files, but it has been widely used since nt and 95.

Windows Registry

The Registry is the big Butler of windows, and the master cannot exit windows. both the core, device driver, service program, user interface, and user management Sam will be used. even using network ad to manage windows also relies on the registry. which of the following statements does Kingsoft/360/rising choose not to sort out the registry as the first choice for optimization? In short, it is too important, without him, windows will be dizzy, it sneezes, windows will be pneumonia.

Many problems related to windows are also related to it. common problems such as slow running, crashes, and malicious modification of the IE homepage all have their merits, rogue trojan software relies heavily on it to achieve ulterior motives. if you don't understand it, don't be blind. if it breaks down, win will give you some color to see.

To access and modify it, windows also provides a variety of ways, and API interfaces are essential. vbscripts and powershell scripts are also supported. commands such as regedit.exeand reg.exe are also essential.

The Registry is divided into two layers. The first layer is the system. different versions of the Registry have different storage locations. The second layer is the user's, which is the ntuser under the user directory. DAT file, which belongs to this category by default. windows assembles two registration information to generate a table for the current user. Sometimes, the user's settings can overwrite the system. For example, a PDF file opens a program by default; sometimes user settings are overwritten by the system, such as all policy settings. For example, the administrator can set that the user cannot open the control panel.

Vomit: disadvantage
Windows manages systems and applications in a centralized manner, causing some problems. most programs must be installed before they can be used. If these files are slightly damaged, the system will stop. not readable. uninstalling and deleting an independent software easily leaves traces, making it difficult to delete it completely. After a long period of time, more and more registration information will be generated. Due to unified management, the system will read the memory at one time, resulting in slow loading. remote Management is not easy unless you buy M $ commercial software.

In particular, for network management, to change the Windows behavior of all users through the registry, you must find one or more parameters that affect this behavior, or one configuration of the application, but because it is centrally managed, it takes a lot of effort to find a value change.

What's more, in many cases, changing the registry information does not take effect immediately and requires restarting. This is also an inconvenience.

Mac plist:
Plist is the mechanism corresponding to the Registry on OS X. plist indicates the attribute list in Chinese. It is based on the XML markup language and has two basic forms: an encrypted binary file and a text format. the two can be converted using the plutil command built in OS X.

Its format is also based on key-value pairs, and is also a tree-layered structure, which is the same as the registry. Its key and value are defined using tags. For example
<Key> name </key>
<String> Tony L. </string>
It defines the key named name, and its value is a string of "Tony L.

Apple provides an application called property list editor to edit plist files. Because it is in XML format, many other tools can be used to edit plist files, even common text editors, for example, textedit. the app can edit plist files in text format, but you must master the XML format. use the command line such as the defaults command or a more general plistbuddy. apple's script language applescript can also be edited.

Apple's management feature is that it is easy to get started, because it is easy to understand and use human languages, unlike the Registry's "God" language. however, it is difficult to grasp the details.

OS X manages plist in a non-centralized manner. The system has its own plist, each program has its own, and each user has its own, such as the dock(com.apple.doc K. (plist), there is a user's own, such as OD-related, exist in/library/preferences/opendirectory. to manage computer and user behavior, use MCX. it is so straightforward. if the application is started, it can be read from the user. If the user does not, no application layer is read, it is considered to be the first time to use,
Creates a set of plist Based on the default method of the program. the plist that has not been run is stored on the disk, so you do not need to touch it. it is not bad, it only affects the program itself, and has nothing to do with the system and other. it can be text and easy to edit. remote updates are also convenient, and replication is directly overwritten. You can restart the application yourself at most. If it is a service, restart the service. There are many fewer chances to restart the service than win.

However, the plist file method is not the most effective storage space, that is, the same thing, the registry database method may occupy less space, while the plist will be larger, however, the binary plist method is also efficient in space.

Plist is the scope. It can be divided into three layers. The first layer is system and exists under/system/library/. The second layer is application and exists in/library. the third layer is user, which exists in the personal directory of each user ~ /Library.

"Profile for Group Policy"

Profile

For ease of management, OS x initially introduced the MCX mechanism, short for Managed Client for Mac OS x, which means user management for Apple OS X. it manages objects in four groups: users, user groups, computers, and computers. the most authoritative introduction to MCX, to count Greg's article, in my own blog "want to be Apple cainiao is not easy" Four blog (http://blog.csdn.net/afatgoat/article/details/4857737), is to introduce how to use workgroup
The simplest method is to use Workgroup Manager for management.

Since the launch of the 10.7 lions system, Apple has used profile to manage Mac computers and iOS, while profile is still based on the MCX principle and described using plist, however, a shell is added to the MCX content and more extensive content is supported, making it possible to manage iOS and then use profile manager to generate and manage profiles.

Group Policy

The profile mechanism is like a group policy on windows, which provides administrators with the possibility to effectively manage target computers and users.

Microsoft's group policy is similar to the registy registry. In the Windows world, there is no group policy without a registry. The Group Policy has local and domain, which are used for different management layers.

Using Microsoft's ad and group policies to manage computers in the domain can be said to be a realistic standard and the most convenient and effective way in the industry. Although the price is a bit expensive-compared with the Apple system, you can see that, in an enterprise environment, to centrally manage users on Windows and Mac computers, the most common practice is to integrate Mac into ad, no matter which method is used (expanding the ad architecture or the golden triangle), there is no doubt that ad plays an important role in enterprise management, on the one hand, ad is widely used and given to Windows is still the main enterprise environment, and OS
X server is only competent at the workgroup level.

Although the Administrator uses ad to manage Mac user authentication, profile | MCX is still required for MAC system management.

Summary:
To put it simply, through the above introduction, I prefer OS X plist to be more effective, controllable, and easy to use.