• Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment,  Microsoft Exchange Server,  Windows Server

    How Exchange's Autodiscover Works With Mail.app

    Autodiscover automatically configures profile settings for Exchange clients. These clients include Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, Outlook for Mac, Mail.app in Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad and ActiveSync enabled phones. Autodiscover is often made out to be complicated. There’s an Autodiscover service that gets installed when a Client Access Server (CAS) role is setup for Exchange 2010 in the form of a default virtual directory named Autodiscover for the default Web site in Internet Information Services (IIS). You then forward an autodiscover service locater record in DNS in the form of _autodiscover._tcp. The virtual directory handles Autodiscover requests. But what about other vendors, and even for Exchange, how do…

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Enable the Debug Menu in the Mac App Store

    The Mac App Store has a debug menu. To enable the debug menu, enable the ShowDebugMenu key in com.apple.appstore. To do so: defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -boolean YES Once enabled, there are a number of options to show the folder where apps download, enable logging, clear cookies and reset the Mac App Store. To turn the Mac App Store debug menu back off: defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -boolean NO

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

    Working with Postgres from the Command Line in Lion Server

    Mac OS X Server 10.7, Lion Server, comes with a few substantial back-end changes. One of these is the move from SQLite3 to PostgreSQL for many of the back-end databases, including Wiki and Podcast Producer (collab), Webmail (roundcubemail), iCal Server and Address Book Server (caldav) and as the back-end to the newest service in Lion Server, Profile Manager (device_management). As such, it’s now important to be able to use PostgreSQL the way we once used SQLite3, when trying to augment the data that these databases contains, as there currently aren’t a lot of options for editing this data (aside from manually of course). Postgres has a number of commands that…

  • Mac OS X Server,  VMware

    Open Directory Requires 2 CPUs

    I was recently experimenting with Parallels to run some Lion Server VMs and I must have wasted a couple of hours trying to get Lion Server up and running as a Profile Manager host in a VM. Then I had the good sense to complain to Arek Dreyer, who I’m guessing had complained to Andrina Kelly who had, well, answered the riddle. Apparently you need to enable a second core in order to promote to an Open Directory Master in Parallels. To enable said second CPU, open Parallels, go to the configure screen for the VM and then make sure CPUs is set to some number higher than 1. Who…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Resetting Flash's Cookies

    Flash stores cookies in the ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects directory. These can be reset by trashing the #SharedObjects folder, which is used to store cookies for Flash, no matter which browser you are using. If doing this en masse (e.g. via Apple Remote Desktop or a patch management solution), then you can do so with the following command, which removes that folder for all users on the system (unless you’re using network homes or have customized the home folder location): rm -fr /Users/*/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects

  • Articles and Books,  sites

    https://krypted.com/ Turns 7!

    Today, https://krypted.com/ turns 7. 9 books and almost 2,000 posts later, I seem to have slowed down a bit if you look at the last couple of months of postings. But I’ve been busy, just trying to get a few other projects finished, so I can get back to my normal writing-too-much self. These projects I’ve been wrapping up include: Writing Using Mac OS X Lion Server for O’Reilly (the final artwork for this one was turned in today) Converting https://krypted.com/ into a publishing company and putting out Time Machine in Mac OS X Lion, which should also be on the iBookstore soon Speaking at 4 or 5 conferences (MacWorld is…