Force MCX refresh - apply policy without a logout/reboot

If you are managing settings with MCX (e.g. like this), you want your MCX settings to apply as soon as they are pushed to the machine. Unfortunately this doesn't happen automatically. They get stored in the local directory services node, which you can see here:

dscl . -mcxread /Computers/local_computer

But they don't get propagated to the relevant plists under managed preferences until a logout or reboot happens. You can check the managed preferences plists like this:

defaults read /Library/Managed\ Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow

Fortunately on 10.6 and later, you can run mcxrefresh to force this propagation without a reboot:

sudo mcxrefresh -n myusername