Removing the automatic connection for 802.1X via terminal

Question

So in the spirit of this question I was wondering if it is possible to disable automatic 802.1X connection via terminal as well. Am I right to assume that this is a computer setting (meaning that if I run this script with no user logged in it still disables it for all existing and future users)?

Answer 1

It took me some hours to learn that it's a boolean value (and not just 0 or 1 as 'defaults' would report) but finally i came up with the following LoginHook which is run via su -- and does the trick. It seems to be a user-setting, although SystemPrefs would ask for a admin password to tweak this setting...

#!/bin/sh

if [ -z "$HOME" ]; then
 echo "$0: HOME not set, cannot disable 802.1x thing. QUIT."
 exit 1
fi

if [ `whoami` = "root" ]; then
  echo "$0: Must run as regular user, not root! QUIT."
  exit 1
fi

# get host uuid
HOSTUUID=`/usr/sbin/ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | grep -E '(UUID)' | cut -d\" -f4`
# define path to eapol prefs
PREFFILE="$HOME/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.network.eapolcontrol.$HOSTUUID.plist"

# write new setting 
defaults write $PREFFILE EthernetAutoConnect -bool false

Using opensnoop(1) or fs_usage(1) I could not see any other files being modified. Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Just disable the Enable automatic connection tickbox in the 802.1x tab of your advanced interface option as it is the equivalent of the terminal command.

Answer 3

I don't know how this solution can work, since a LoginHook is executed as root and not as the user itself.

Here my solution:

#! /bin/sh
su - $1 -c "defaults -currentHost write com.apple.network.eapolcontrol EthernetAutoConnect -bool false";

Note that the option -currentHost will do the stuff with the host uuid ;-)

Cheers, Michele