Tag Archives: efi

Mac OS X Mac OS X Server

Hackintosh on EFI-X

July 27, 2009 – 1:00 pm

Considering building a Hackintosh?  There are a number of methods out there that I can’t say I’m in love with.  But one method I do like is using EFI-X, provided you’re happy with the supported motherboards, mostly from Gigabyte.  EFI-X is a hardware based EFI emulator, which allows you to run more natively as a Mac OS X computer.  Oh, and if you build a Hackintosh, don’t forget to buy a legitimate copy of Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server to run it on.

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Mac OS X Mac OS X Server Mac Security Mass Deployment

Editing EFI

May 24, 2009 – 1:30 pm

There are a number of tasks that a little EFI trickery might require.  If you need to edit EFI, check out rEFIt on SourceForge. rEFIt will allow you to edit your boot environment to show a selection menu for operating systems and provide custom icons for loading operating systems.

If you just need to select operating systems, BootPicker will be a more easily support tool now that Apple has taken over the project.

OK, so this one is short – but what do you expect, it’s a holiday weekend…

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Mac OS X Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X: Reset Open Firmware Password

March 18, 2008 – 2:36 pm

To reset the open firmware password you can either reboot while resetting PRAM 3 or more times or just pull out the RAM, reboot and reseat it after the next restart.  Have fun with that.

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Mac OS X Mass Deployment

Fun Times with the JAMF Binary

October 24, 2007 – 12:11 pm

I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal

Casper is an incredibly useful tool for package deployment, maintaining records of the systems in your environment and policy management. But for those of you already using Casper (or considering it) you’ll be glad to know that you can use the jamf binary to do all kinds of fun stuff that can help with troubleshooting computers in your environment. For example:

The following command will setup a hidden SSH user and restrict SSH access to be allowed by only that user:
jamf createAccount -username casperadmin -realname "Casper Admin" -password capseradmin -home /Users/casperadmin -hiddenUser -admin -secureSSH

This command can be used to display a popup on the system it’s run on that says “Hello Minnesota”:
jamf displayMessage -message "Hello Minnesota"

The following command will unmount a mounted server called mainserver:
jamf unmountServer -mountPoint /Volumes/mainserver

The following command can be used to change a users home page in all of their web browsers:
jamf setHomePage -homepage www.318.com

The following command can be used to fire up the SSH daemon:
jamf startSSH

The following command can be used to fix the By Host files on the local machine:
jamf fixByHostFiles -target 127.0.0.1

The following command can be used to run a Fix Permissions on the local machine:
jamf fixPermissions /

The following can be used to flush all of the caches on your local system:
jamf flushCaches -flushSystem

The following can be used to bless the drive externaldrive:
jamf bless -target /Volumes/externaldrive

The following can be used to run a software update on the local system:
jamf runSoftwareUpdate

The following can be used to bind to an AD environment (rather than dsconfigad if for some reason you just didn’t like using dsconfigad), but would need all the parameters for your environment put in as flags:
jamf bindAD

The following can be used to enable OpenFirmware passwords on your computer to secretpass:
jamf setOFP -mode full -password secretpass

Most of these options are available inside the Casper suite, but the ability to do some simple tasks very quickly from the terminal is yet another reason to fall in love with Casper.

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