• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  MacAdmins Podcast

    Episode 13 Of The MacAdmins.Org Podcast Now Available

    Stoked that we got to interview Michael Lynn (@mikeymikey) for the MacAdmins podcast. It turned out to be a great episode on the future of Mac management and MDM. I’m glad we were able to have him join in! Pepijn and Marcus did a great job as well, so all round, a great episode. Hope you enjoy! Or find it on the Podcast site at http://podcast.macadmins.org/2016/10/24/episode-13-mdm-me-maybe/

  • SQL

    Use SQL Views to Grant Access and Constrain Output

    You can grant access to certain columns to view in SQL without providing access to specific users to see the whole database. This is pretty useful when delegating reporting to users, without giving them access to all of the data in your database. For example, a user might be able to see a column with an address, but not a column with a credit card number, increasing database security while allowing you to delegate certain tasks when appropriate. In this article, we’ll use the same “Customers” table from our first articles, signupdate: ID Site Contact Address City Zip Country SignupDate 1 Krypted Charles Edge my house Minneapolis 55418 US 2005-01-01 2…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Configure Apple Push Notifications In Yosemite Server

    Push Notifications can be used in most every service in the Server app, especially in 3.5 for Yosemite (which I still like to call Yosemite Server as it makes me think of Yosemite Sam in a tux, pouring champagne). Any service that requires Push Notifications will provide the ability to setup APNS during the configuration of the service. But at this point, I usually just set up Push Notifications when I setup a new server. To enable Push Notifications for services, you’ll first need to have a valid AppleID. Once you have an AppleID, open the Server app and then click on the name of the server. At the Overview…

  • Unix,  Windows Server,  Xsan

    Setting up CHAP on LeftHand w/ CLI

    LeftHand Storage uses the cliq command line for configuring their devices. cliq isn’t necessarily interactive and so we end up needing to specify the username, password and IP of the device with each command (although you can setup a key as well if you’re going to be doing automated tasks). One task that I’ve found to be pretty common is to use cliq to enable Chap authentication for volumes. To do so you’ll use the assignVolumeChap verb. Along with the assignVolumeChap verb you will need a number of options, each with an = for the payload of the option and delimited with a space between them. When using the assignVolumeChap…

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

    Reset the Admin or Root Password in Mac OS X

    Forgot the admin password in Mac OS X? Well, Apple let’s you boot computers into what is known as Single User Mode. To boot a Mac into Single User Mode, boot the machine holding down Command-S. Once the system boots up, you should see a command prompt. Here, run fsck: fsck -fy Then mount the file system: mount -uw / Then reset the password using the passed command passwd <username> For example, if the user is root: passwd root When prompted, provide the desired administrative password.