• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    S/MIME in OS X Isn't Just For Tin Hat Wearing Nerds Anymore

    S/MIME, or Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is the de facto standard for encrypting and signing mail. You can encrypt mail to keep prying eyes off of it. Signing though, is much more common as it addresses the issue of non-repudiation in many organizations, or giving people a way to make sure that the email that they think you sent really came from you. It was also available in GPG plug-ins for mail, back in the day. But S/MIME used to really be for people who thought the government was out to get them, work for government agencies, just liked to be kinda’ nerdy or actually had something to hide. But…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Where Did My Folder Go?

    I know I’ve written up telling OS X to show you invisible files, but what if you don’t want to make all invisible files show up, just make one file or folder go invisible, or for that matter, visible. Well, it’s easier than you might think. Apple has bundled a nice little command called chflags into the OS. To use it to hide a file, simply type chflags followed by hidden and then the folder. For example, let’s say you wanted to hide your ~/Library folder. Just run the following to hide it: chflags hidden ~/Library And then let’s say you wanted to unhide it ’cause you realized that it’s…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment,  Network Infrastructure

    Use ARD to Restart to NetBoot Server

    It’s summer! And at many schools that means that the kids are gone and it’s time to start imaging again. And imaging means a lot of rebooting holding down the N key. But wait, you have ARD access into all those computers. And you have automated imaging tools. This means you can image the whole school from the comfort of your cabin out by the lake. Just use ARD and a little automation and you’ll be fishing in no time! If you haven’t used the bless command to restart a client to NetBoot server then you’re missing out. The bless command is used to set the boot drive that a…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    Aliasing Commands

    I find there are a lot of commands I run routinely. Some of which are pretty long strings that are thrown together in order to find what can, at times, be a small piece of information. Or, I might routinely log into a server and want to trim down the command required to do so. Let’s take an example of this in using the open command to vnc into a server. The command to open a server in this fashion would be (assuming a server name of mail.mygroup.mycompany.com, a username of krypted and a password of mypass): open vnc://krypted:mypass@mail.mygroup.mycompany.com For this exercise we’re going to be saving the above command…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Managing Mail and Safari RSS Subscriptions from the Command Line

    Safari can subscribe to RSS feeds; so can Mail. Podcast Producer is an RSS or XML feed as are the feeds created by blog and wiki services in Mac OS X Server. And then of course, RSS and ATOM come pre-installed with practically every blogging and wiki tool on the market. Those doing mass deployment and scripting work can make use of automatically connecting users to and caching information found in these RSS feeds. If you have 40,000 students, or even 250 employees, it is easier to send a script to those computers than to open the Mail or Safari client on each and subscribe to an RSS feed. Additionally,…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  Windows XP

    NTP, OS X, Windows, Cisco and You

    At this point, most Mac admins know to how to enable ntp on a Mac OS X Server and set clients to the server. Most Mac admins also know how to use managed preferences to set ntp as well. We all know that time is pretty important and most are using ntp at this point. Network time should, almost by definition, be continuous, which allows ntpd in Mac OS X can update clocks in small denominations. Thus, managing corrections with little overhead or impact to the system enables ntp to be an inexpensive method for managing clocks. But ntp is also built to keep things running smoothly even when there…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Unix

    Making Autocomplete a Bit Less Sensitive

    I can’t stand it when I open terminal and go to cd into a directory I know to exist only to be confused by why using the tab doesn’t autocomplete my command. For those that don’t know, when you are using any modern command line interface, when you’re indicating a location in a file system, the tab key will autocomplete what you are typing. So let’s say you’re going to /System. I usually just type cd /Sys and then use the tab to autocomplete. In many cases, the first three letters, followed by a tab will get you there and you can therefore traverse deep into a filesystem in a…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Fast User Switching

    Fast User Switching, when enabled, allows users to leave one session open and hop to another user account. Great for training, testing and impressing friends (ok, so maybe it won’t impress your friends, but the thumb trick is getting old). To enable Fast User Switching, open the Accounts System Preference pane and click on Login Options. Then check the box for Show fast user switching menu. By default you’ll then see your user name in the menu bar. To do this from the command line: defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences MultipleSessionEnabled -bool 'YES' To then disable it from the command line: defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences MultipleSessionEnabled -bool 'NO' What’s really cool though, is…

  • cloud,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  MobileMe

    iCloud, Lion and iOS5

    As most people who are going to read anything I write will already know, Apple released their new cloud service today. The Apple pages are already up, with a splash page on the main site pointing to a dedicated iCloud page. Apple has also anticipated some of the questions that most of us using MobileMe were going to ask in a short Kbase article re: the transition from MobileMe to iCloud: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4597 Additionally, an email went out to MobileMe users today that read: We’d like to share some exciting news with you about iCloud — Apple’s upcoming cloud service, which stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to your devices.…