• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    FTP On Lion Server

    Much has been made about the demise of FTP on OS X Server. Well, while it may be badly burned, it’s not dead yet. Let’s look at enabling FTP first on the server and then per share. Enable FTP on the Server The first thing to do on a server that you want to expose through FTP is enable tnftpd. To do so, open Workgroup Manager or Server and create a group that has user who you want to provide FTP services to. In this example we are going to assume a dedicated FTP server and open access to everyone, but feel free to swap out your group name for…

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

    Making Every User an Admin

    If you deploy a large number of computers to users who are somewhat likely to play practical jokes on each other then you will run into some interesting issues. If you are deploying one computer to every user and you want each user to be an administrator of their computer then you might be tempted to allow all users to be administrators of all computers. If you do then prepare for an infinite number of sometimes amusing practical jokes. But really, being proactive about this brings up an interesting point: how do you deploy a computer and make only the user who you want to be an administrator an administrator.…

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

    More Group Management with dseditgroup

    Now that we’ve covered using dscl to create a group, let’s look at using dseditgroup to do the same thing. In the previous example we created a group called Local Admins or ladmins for short. First let’s read that group’s information. To do so, run dseditgroup followed by the operation, which can be read, create, delete, edit or checkmember as the operations (verbs). The -o is optional, so : dseditgroup -o read ladmins Or the following has the same output: dseditgroup read ladmins In the case of a namespace collision between two ladmins in two directory services then the one listed highest in the Search Policy would be displayed. The…