I have deployed many a Macintosh computer over the past many years. This script allows one to provide the Apple out-of-box experience to the user, after the administrator has already had a chance to set up the machine.

Simply boot the machine up, create an administrative account (I like to use “local_admin”) install the necessary software for your deployment, and copy this script to the root of the file system.

Then, reboot the system in single user mode by holding down command-s on boot, and run

/osx-welcome.sh

The script will do the following:

1. Mount the file system in a read-write state
2. Remove a number of files that are written during first-boot. They essentially ID the system in different ways.
3. Shuts down the machine.

You may now use CloneZilla or another imaging program to grab an image of this machine. The next time you boot the machine, or the product of it’s image, you will be presented with the OS X Welcome screen, which will walk you through the process of setting up the machin for the very first time.

This script will leave intact any accounts you create before running the script, so in this example, the local_admin account is still in place. Great for large deployments!