• Mac OS X Server

    Use DNS To Improve Caching Service Discoverability

    Clients discover the Apple Caching service bundled with macOS Server (and in the future macOS) automatically. You can create a text recored for _aaplcache._tcp on your DNS server. That would look _aaplcache._tcp 518400 IN TXT “prs=192.168.50.100” Name: _aaplcache._tcp with a type of TXT and a TTL of 518400 seconds. The prs is the address to be used and is set to a value using prs=192.168.50.100.

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X Server

    Precache Now Pulls Models From Jamf Pro

    Added 3 new flags into precache tonight: –jamfserver, –jamfuser, and –jamfpassword. These are used to provide a Jamf Pro server (or cloud instance), the username to an account that can list the mobile devices on that server, and a password to that account respectively. Basically, when you provide these, the script will pull a unique set of models and then precache updates for them. It’s similar to grabbing a list of devices: curl -s -u myuser:mypassword https://myserver.jamfcloud.com/JSSResource/mobiledevices And then piping the output of a device list to: perl -lne 'BEGIN{undef $/} while (/<model_identifier>(.*?)<\/model_identifier>/sg){print $1}' And then running that array as an input to precache.py. Hope this helps make the script…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Enable The Caching Service Using Server 5.2 on macOS Sierra

    The Caching Server in OS X Server 5.2 (for Sierra) does content, apps, and software updates. The Software Update service is hidden by default indicating it will likely be removed from the Server app in a future update, although when is kinda’ up in the air. The Software Update service can still be enabled for now, which we’ll look at later. The Caching service on the Server app works like a proxy. When 10 of your users download that latest Nicholas Sparks book and movie, you only sacrifice your WAN pipe to download it once, and the other 9 people piggy-back off that. And when 10.12.1 ships, you only need to download it over…

  • Apple Configurator,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Scripting The OS X Caching Server To Cache Updates

    The Caching Server in OS X is a little bit of a black box. But, it’s not all that complicated, compared to some things in the IT world. I’d previously written about command line management of the service itself here. When you enable the caching service, the server registers itself as a valid Caching Server. Nearby devices then lookup the closest update server with Apple and register with that update server using a GUID: /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin settings caching:ServerGUID Then, each time the device looks for an update, it does so against http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml using the device model. Noticed this with this line in my proxy logs: "GET http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-"…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Disable The iCloud Options In Caching Server For OS X Server 5

    I’ve written a couple of articles about the Caching service in OS X Server 5 for El Capitan. As of OS X Server 5, the Caching service now caches local copies on the computer running the Caching service of iCloud content. This allows you to cache content once and then have it accessed by multiple devices faster. I’m torn on this option. On the one hand, I love the fact that I can cache things and on the other hand I find it frightening that a random user can cache things I might not want them to cache on behalf of another user. I know, I know, they’re encrypted with…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Exclusively Use a Given Interface for the Caching Service in Mountain Lion Server

    The caching service in Mountain Lion Server (OS X Server 10.8) by default can use any interface installed on the system. I’ve now seen a couple instances where we have a Small Tree card and when a big update comes up, we loose file services speed due to caching data. To combat this, we can tell the Caching service to use the built-in Ethernet interface exclusively instead. To do so, first use ifconfig to determine which interface is which. Then tell the caching service which to use, using the serveradmin command, followed by settings and then the name of the setting, caching:Interface, setting the value to the en of the…

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

    The New Caching Service In OS X Server

    These days, new services get introduced in OS X Server during point releases. OS X now has a Software Caching server built to make updates faster. This doesn’t replace Apple’s Software Update Server mind you, it supplements. And, it’s very cool technology. “What makes it so cool” you might ask, given that Software Update Server has been around for awhile. Namely, the way that clients perform software update service location and distribution with absolutely no need (or ability) for centralized administration. Let’s say that you have 200 users with Mac Minis and an update is released. That’s 200 of the same update those devices are going to download over your…