• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Time Machine

    Manage Time Machine Server In macOS Server 5.2

    The Time Machine service in macOS Server 5.2 hasn’t changed much from the service in previous operating systems. To enable the Time Machine service, open the Server app, click on Time Machine in the SERVICES sidebar. If the service hasn’t been enabled to date, the ON/OFF switch will be in the OFF position and no “Backup destination” will be shown in the Settings pane. Click on the ON button to see the New Destination screen, used to configure a list of volumes as a destinations for Time Machine backups. The selection volume should be large enough to have space for all of the users that can potentially use the Time Machine…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Time Machine

    Use Time Machine Server in OS X Server 5

    The Time Machine service in OS X Server 5 hasn’t changed much from the service in previous operating systems. To enable the Time Machine service, open the Server app, click on Time Machine in the SERVICES sidebar. If the service hasn’t been enabled to date, the ON/OFF switch will be in the OFF position and no “Backup destination” will be shown in the Settings pane. Click on the ON button to see the New Destination screen, used to configure a list of volumes as a destinations for Time Machine backups. The selection volume should be large enough to have space for all of the users that can potentially use the Time…

  • cloud,  FileMaker,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Network Infrastructure,  Time Machine,  Xsan

    Obtain Information From Watchman Monitoring Using a Script

    Watchman Monitoring is a tool used to monitor computers. I’ve noticed recently that there’s a lot of traffic on the Watchman Monitoring email list that shows people want a great little (and by little I mean inexpensive from a compute time standpoint) monitoring tool to become a RMM (Remote Management and Monitoring) tool. The difference here is in “Management.” Many of us actually don’t want a monitoring tool to become a management tool unless we are very deliberate about what we do with it. For example, that script that takes a machine name of ‘rm -Rf /’ that some ironic hipster of a user decided to name their hard drive…

  • Football,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Time Machine

    2012 Penn State MacAdmins Conference

    Don’t let the theft of the Paternoville sign fool ya’, State College is as safe as ever. That is, until a bunch of Mac guys descend on the Nittany Lion Shrine. Yes, it’s that time of the year again when Mac guys from around the world (and yes, all of the speakers are male) descend upon Pennsylvania State University from throughout the Big 10 and beyond to discuss the Penn State mascot, the Nittany Lion. Actually, it’s a mountain lion, so we can’t discuss it quite yet at that point, but we can talk about a slightly bigger cat: Lion. Lion deployment, scripted tools, Munki, InstaDMG, Puppet, migrations, “postPC,” PSU…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Time Machine

    Using ServerBackup to Backup Lion Servers

    ServerBackup is a new command included in Lion Server, located in the /usr/sbin/ServerBackup directory. The ServerBackup command is used to backup the server settings for services running on a Lion Server. The command is pretty easy and straight forward to use, but does require you to be using Time Machine in order to actually run. In the most basic form, ServerBackup is invoked to run a backup using the backup command. Commands are prefixed with a -cmd followed by the actual command. As you might be able to guess, the commandlet to fire off a backup is backup. The backup command requires a -source option which will almost always be…

  • Business,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  public speaking,  Time Machine

    My New Book on Time Machine Now Available

    I have published a new book on Time Machine (Time Capsule, deployment/Managed Prefs and Time Machine Server as well). I wrote it months and months ago and it finally ended up getting posted (publishing is a weird world like that sometimes). It is available for Kindle (Amazon) for now and should be up on the iBooks store as soon as the good people from iTunes Connect get back from their holiday break. To quote the Amazon excerpt: Time Machine is Apple’s built-in backup solution that comes bundled with Mac OS X. In this book, we will explore Time Machine, looking at how to enable Time Machine, configure what to back…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  MobileMe,  Time Machine

    Mac in the Cloud

    A few days ago I noticed a post in Tim O’Reilly’s twitter feed asking whether or not it would matter whether people ran a Mac or a PC once everyone had migrated to a cloud.  Well, there are a few things about Mac OS X that make it fairly difficult to run in a cloud environment: EFI – Mac OS X doesn’t use a BIOS like most Operating Systems.  This makes the bootup process fairly difficult in a distributed computing environment where the Guest OS would be OS X and the Host OS would be something else. Lack of Firepower – I love the Xserve.  I always have.  They’re some…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Time Machine

    Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine Config

    You can customize what Time Machine does not back up by using the following plist: /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist Simply add the strings that you don’t want to back up and it will no longer back up those locations.  Remove the strings to re-add them at a later date. In the UserPathsExcluded key, you can exclude paths that in relation to users home directories.