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

    Quick and Dirty OS Installations with startosinstall

    Automating OS installations is going to eventually be about as easy on macOS as it is in iOS (er, if you have MDM that is). But in the meantime, it’s getting a bit more challenging. The obvious way Apple would prefer this to happen these days is via the startosinstall command that first shipped with El Capitan and with brtool getting moved around all the time, and becoming less of a thing, there’s one quick and easy thing you can do: sudo "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app" --agreetolicense --nointeraction --volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD In the above command, we’ve dropped “Install macOS Sierra.app” on a machine. While you’d guess that…

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

    Configuring Time In OS X Mountain Lion & OS X Mountain Lion Server

    Time is a very important aspect of OS X Server, as it has been since the early days. Time is so important that if you see network time server, NTP or 5 minutes as the answer on an Apple exam, you should just pick that one, as it’s invariably correct. The traditional way to configure time zones and Network Time Servers is to use systemsetup command. Before you set a time zone, run the following to see a list of all available time zones, use the -listtimezones option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -listtimezones To set the time zone, pick one and use the -settimezone option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -settimezone…