After setting up a managed user on my daughter's laptop [2008 macbook pro, OSX 10.9.1], I tested that application and website logging worked – I was able to go into Parental Controls, bring up the Logs… window, and view activity for that account.
A week later, when I open the same Logs… dialog up it's always blank. No applications, websites, etc. are displayed regardless of the time period I select.
It's possible but unlikely that she did something deliberate to break parental controls. For instance, maybe one of her friends showed her a "hack" that uses root access via Single User Mode to break logging? But I don't think this is the case.
I've also read Apple community forum posts that suggest that Parental Controls is broken, but they appear to be for prior versions of the OS.
Other clues, possibly related:
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Event logs are present in the appropriate place but nothing new is being logged (latest directory is 2013/12, it's now 2014/01)
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I have the computer set up to do remote management of parental controls, but when I open parental controls on my own mac it does not show her laptop as an "other computer" to be managed.
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There's no evidence of parentalcontrol service failures in system.log
Is there any comprehensive list of files, chmods, etc. that I can use to verify that parental controls are working and/or watch its operation for errors?
Best Answer
I have not tried this solution yet, but there is an Apple support thread here that mentions blank logs, that offers a solution. Here is the solution outlined in that link:
I as soon as I kick my kid off the computer tonight, I plan to try this and I'll report back and/or update my answer.