File Services are perhaps the most important aspect of any server because file servers are often the first server an organization purchases. This has been changing over the past few years, with many a file being hosted by cloud solutions, such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and of course, iCloud. But many still need a terrestrial server and for predominantly Apple environments, a Server app running on OS X Yosemite isn’t exactly a bad idea. There are a number of protocols built into OS X Yosemite Server dedicated to serving files, including AFP, SMB and WebDAV. These services, combined comprise the File Sharing service in OS X Yosemite running the…
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Come One, Come All: To The JAMF Nation User Conference
If you do deployments of Apple products, there are a few conferences to look at. Based on where you are and what industry you are in, some of these are better than others. But if you use the Casper Suite or are considering doing so, it would be really hard to beat JNUC, the JAMF Nation User Conference. And yes, I’d of said all this and posted this even if I hadn’t of come to work here a week and a half ago! So come one, come all to Minneapolis. And if you’re really nice, we’ll hook you up with some good old fashioned Minnesota lutefisk!
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Which Apple TV Works With My TV?
I recently purchased a new TV (actually won, but that’s aside from the point). I put the DirecTV receiver on there and it worked like a charm. Then I put the Apple TV on and it appeared to work like a charm. But when the screensaver kicked in, the colors inverted. Sometimes I’d see lines across the screen and other times the Apple TV would get weird and just be blurry. I knew immediately that I was sending it too much. Turns out the new TV couldn’t do less than 1080p and the old Apple TV couldn’t do anything higher than 720p. To confirm, I looked up the serial number.…
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DeviceScout
DeviceScout is a tool that leverages JAMF’s Casper Suite to show administrators vital statistics and show alerts on client systems. These alerts display some of the critical aspects of systems, from encryption to disk capacity to backups, there are a number of pretty cool aspects of DeviceScout. Using the device view, you can view serial numbers, device types, check-in status, boot volumes, memory, etc. It’s a lot of insight into what you have on your systems. I’m a huge fan of such visibility. You will need to be running Casper to leverage DeviceScout, but it provides a very simple interface for management and even techs to see what’s going on…
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MacIT Presentation
I enjoy going to MacIT so much. Paul Kent ran a great little conference in Monterrey one year and I am so glad that I started going to Macworld around that time. I missed it last year while trying to trim back on the travel and am pretty stoked I got to get there again this year. Special thanks to everyone I saw and was able to hang out with. Considering there isn’t a single person I didn’t want to hang out with, sorry if I didn’t see you or get to spend any time. Thanks to Duncan and Kevin White for making time to do the podcasts (hopefully the…
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Install Fonts Using Apple Configurator
I guess someone asked for it, although it wasn’t me… But you can install fonts on Apple devices, using Apple Configurator. To do so, first open Apple Configurator and click on an existing profile or create a new profile for the font installation. Scroll down in the list along the left sidebar until you see Font. Click on Font and then click on Configure. You are then presented with a dialog box to select a font file. Browse to the font you’d like to deploy and then click on Select. Click on the plus sign (+) in the upper right corner of the screen if you’d like to deploy more…
- iPhone, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Mass Deployment, Microsoft Exchange Server, Network Infrastructure, Ubuntu, Unix, VMware
Quick nmap Hacks
The nmap application is a pretty easy-to-use tool that can be used to port scan objects in a network environment. To obtain mmap in an easy-to-use package installer, for OS X check out the download page at http://nmap.org/download.html#macosx (use the same page to grab it for Windows or *nix as well). Once downloaded run the package/rpm/whatever. Before I scan a system, I like to pull the routing table and eth info to determine how scans are being run, which can be run by using the mmap command anong with the —iflist option: nmap —iflist Basic Scanning To then scan a computer, just use the mmap command followed by the host…
- Active Directory, cloud, Consulting, iPhone, Kerio, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Mass Deployment, Microsoft Exchange Server, Network Infrastructure, Windows Server
Dig TTL While Preparing For A Migration
Any time doing a migration of data from one IP to another where that data has a DNS record that points users towards the data, we need to keep the amount of time it takes to repoint the record to a minimum. To see the TTL of a given record, let’s run dig using +trace, +nocmd to turn off showing the version and query options, +noall to turn off display flags, +answer to still show the answer section of my reponse and most importantly for these purposes +ttlid to toggle showing the TTL on. Here, we’ll use these to lookup the TTL for the https://krypted.com/ A record: dig +trace +nocmd…
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Testing iOS Services Using Services Test
The good folks at Amsys have built a nice little app called Services Test for verifying outbound connectivity to critical services to make iOS devices work. If you are having problems connecting to these services or activating devices, simply open the App and tap on the play button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Click on the Info button to see what each of these servers do during the activation and management process. The app can also test a few common server services, including connecting to an OS X Server, Casper and AirWatch. These are typical services used in an iOS and Mac environment. Overall, this is…
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Disable Options At Initial Config Time Using Apple Configurator
In Apple Configurator 1.4.3, which just dropped, you can reduce the setup time for iOS devices. This is pretty helpful in Configuration Centers and when warehousing/performing thin setups of devices. To access this new feature, open Configurator and go to the Prepare screen. From there, you will have the Setup tab. Click on Setup and then in the resultant screen, you will see each of the initial screens in iOS that you can now skip. So put this in perspective, if you check the Location Services box and then prepare a device, even if not restoring a backup, you then won’t be prompted for whether or not you want to…