• Alexa

    Install the ask command-line interface for Alexa on macOS

    You’ve written an Alexa skill. Now you want to upload it to Alexa and submit for certification. Before you do anything, you’ll want to make sure you have a developer account setup and that you’ve accepted the EULA for the Alexa developer program at https://developer.amazon.com/alexa. To do so, simply go there and click sign in and it’ll take you through the prompts. You’ll need this as when you init your session, you’ll be prompted to link an account through the Amazon website. Once done, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. First, install the latest version of node from https://nodejs.org/dist/v6.10.0/node-v6.10.0.pkg (it’s a package so follow the defaults to…

  • Apple Configurator,  iPhone,  JAMF

    Automator Actions for the Caspers

    Looks like Sal et al posted a suite of Automator Actions to link the Casper Suite to Apple Configurator at https://configautomation.com/jamf-actions.html. In my limited tests so far they work pretty darn well! Some pretty cool things here, like having the JSS rename a mobile device when managed through Apple Configurator, having Apple Configurator instruct the JSS to remove a device from a group, clear passcodes, update inventory, and other common tasks involved in workflows when leveraging Apple Configurator for en masse device management. Good stuff!

  • Mac OS X Server

    Removing 'serveradmin settings' Entries in OS X Server

    I frequently write about adding entries in OS X Servers configuration database using serveradmin. But there are a lot of causes for various symptoms in OS X and trying some post of mine might end up biting you later, if it doesn’t fix your problem and you end up leaving the keys in place in OS X Server. Therefore, let’s look at something I might tell you to do, such as set a mail relay host from serveradmin: serveradmin settings mail:postfix:smtp_auth_relay_dict:smtp_auth_relay_host = mdm.krypted.com Once the setting has been configured, you might want to get rid of it outright. Now, this one happens to be exposed in the GUI, so you…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment,  Network Infrastructure,  Windows Server

    Using the ExtremeZ-IP Command Line

    When you are configuring ExtremeZ-IP as a print server, you will need to set up and configure each printer. However, if you already have setup and configured printer queues for the Windows server, you can import existing queues into ExtremeZ-IP. This can be done programatically via the ExtremeZ-IP EZIPUTIL command line tool. EZIPUTIL has a number of options, whereby the SERVER option is used to configure global settings for ExtremeZ-IP, VOLUME is used to create, edit and delete print queues and PRINT is used to manage shared print queues. Each of the options also has a number of switches for the feature(s) that are being managed. These are structured as…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  Xsan

    Disable and Remove .DS_Store Files

    In a number of environments, where SMB, AFP and other file sharing protocols are used with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux clients, there are a number of hidden files that Mac OS X leaves behind. For anyone who has managed an environment like this you’re likely to notice the .DS_Store files and potentially even have tried taking measures to get rid of them. However, try as you might they’re likely to have come back repeatedly. But you don’t have to live with them. You can tell your Windows clients not to show hidden files.  From Windows XP, open an explorer.exe window (Windows Explorer, also accessible by browsing any folder…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Removing Norton AntiVirus with a Script

    For some reason the uninstaller from Symantec doesn’t work in removing Norton (NAV 10). My guess, without delving into their uninstaller too deeply is that they ran into what I ran into, which is that the com.symantec.* processes are prefixed by a bracketed alphanumeric sequence. To get around this I listed them and used grep to grab each one, then awk to grab the label and did a launchctl stop against the label name once I had it. The rest of this script is pretty straight forward forcing the rm of each of the contents of the items from the snapshot plus the items from the pkg BoM.  Here’s the…