• Mac OS X

    Signing Installation Packages

    In OS X, installers are known as packages. The trend in OS X is to sign anything going onto a computer so that it can then be installed without concern that the product is not authentic. The productsign command provides the ability to sign packages in much the same way that the codesign command can be used on apps. For example, let’s say that we wanted to sign a package called Alpha.pkg in /tmp with Apple DeveloperID 31415926535897932384626 and have it result in a new package, Omega.pkg in the same directory. The command would be as follows: productsign --sign 'Developer ID Installer: 31415926535897932384626' '/temp/Alpha.pkg' '/temp/Omega.pkg' You can also timestamp the…

  • Mac OS X

    Disable Dock Autohide

    One of those annoying little things is when you ARD into a system and the Dock is nowhere to be seen. Why do we (or should I say they) autohide Docks on servers? Either way, when I ARD into a box and I don’t see a Dock I have this line saved as a Template: defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false; killall Dock By writing an autohide key that is false into com.apple.dock for the currently logged in user, I don’t have to deal with the Dock disappearing any more. You need to kill the Dock and let it respawn, thus the killall as well. Once I’m done working with…

  • Mac OS X

    App My CLI, for Great Good

    For those that have had the pleasure of working with certain Windows-based laptops, there may be one particularly crazy-making design choice: the radio-disable switch. To paraphrase Seinfeld, what’s up with that? It’s a ‘feature’ (ahem) not utilized often enough to remind folks they have it, nor explained properly to the customer by the manufacturer. And it can drive IT support personnel nuts, as almost nobody in their right mind turns off wireless access voluntarily… yet it still happens from time to time, causing both sides to be confused for quite some time until they employ Occam’s Razor. And there are various locations it might be on the laptops, too, depending on…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    A Guide To Using Mountain Lion Server (OS X 10.8)

    I’ve been doing a number of postings on how to use various features of the latest version of OS X Server. Given that WordPress is pretty much a reverse chronological listing of articles I’ve written, I thought I’d put together a listing of the pages that I’ve done for OS X Server 10.8 (Mountain Lion Server) in order to offer a more pedagogically aligned way of reading these posts. As such, here is the Table of Contents for these posts: Introduction What Changed 10 Impactful Changes Upgrading from Lion Upgrading from Snow Leopard Managing the Server Configuring Alerts Using Web Modules Enable Push Notifications Configuring Time and Time Services Setting Up…

  • Mac OS X

    A Sneak Peak At Mac OS X 10.9

    Yes, it’s about a month or two into the OS cycle and there’s now a 10.8.1. So it’s time to announce the name and image that will be used with the next OS. We’re down to Ocelot, Serval and Bobcat. Therefore, I would think that 10.9 will be… Drumroll… BOBCAT! And from some Chinese factories I’ve been smuggled pictures of what the box that contains the disks will look like. It’s a little retro (disks are now retro btw). And I mean, Police Academy 2 era retro. But think of the startup sounds the OS could make. Think of how much people would want that face beaming back at them…

  • Mac OS X

    Determining .app Executables From a Script

    I’ve mentioned the codesign tool in previous articles, but today let’s look at a specific use. I recently needed to generate a report of the executable for around 2000 app bundles. Luckily, codesign displays the executable for an app when run with the –display option: codesign --display /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app The output looks as follows: Executable=/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal Another tool that I haven’t written much about is productsign (also in /usr/sbin of Mac OS X 10.8). I’ll look at that one next, as a means of signing packages.

  • Mac OS X

    Debugging Twitter

    I was recently working on a new project developing against Twitter using their JSON interface. Turns out that the Twitter app has an awesome little feature to assist with such a task, a Console. To see the menu for the Console, enable the Develop menu, by putting a true boolean ShowDevelopMenu key into the com.twitter.twitter-mac.plist: defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ShowDevelopMenu -bool true Once enabled, use the Develop menu to open Console. Here, you can select various buttons and see the GET, POST, PUT or DELETE sent. as well as the entities sent. To disable the Develop menu: defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ShowDevelopMenu -bool false

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

    Using The serverinfo Command To Get, Well, Server Info In Mountain Lion Server

    OS X Mountain Lion Server comes with the /usr/sbin/serverinfo command. The serverinfo command can be pretty useful when you’re looking to programmatically obtain information about the very basic state of an OS X Server. The first option indicates whether the Server app has been downloaded from the app store, which is the –software option: serverinfo --software When used, this option reports the following if the Server.app can be found: This system has server software installed. Or if the software cannot be found, the following is indicated: This system does NOT have server software installed. The –productname option can be used to determine the name of the software app: serverinfo --productname If…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X

    Viewing AirPlay On A Mac or Windows Computer With The Reflection App

    AirPlay is the feature of iOS that displays the output of an iOS device or Mac computer to an AirPlay enabled device. This can mean redirecting the output of a presentation to an AppleTV or even some televisions now come with AirPlay as a feature. Reflection is an inexpensive app for Mac OS X and Windows that can reflect AirPlay output from an iOS device or a Mac to a Mac or Windows computer. To enable AirPlay on a Mac, use the Displays tab on the Display System Preference pane to set the AirPlay option for “Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available”. This will display an option…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    10 Features I Miss From Mountain Lion & Mountain Lion Server

    Apple’s not going to slow down innovation just to make me happy. I get that. But what have I noticed most about the differences between Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion Server and their predecessors, and maybe what to do to get some of them back? Podcast Producer: I am going to just put it out there. I liked Podcast Producer. I hope it shows back up in the future, even though I’m controlling my expectations. As someone who deals with a lot of video, there are a number of features that were really helpful to me, with or without Xgrid. I’ve replaced the command line aspects with tools such as…