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

    Refresh OS X CRLs

    I recently found an existing image with a lot of stale crl information. We couldn’t rebuild the image, so we decided to instead refresh all of the crl information. This information is stored in /var/db/crls/crlcache.db. Deleting the file turned out to be problematic so we needed to clear items out of the tables instead. While this could be done using a few different tools, it turns out there’s a command built into os x to take care of this process for us called crlrefresh. To use crlrefresh to clean up stale crlinformation and fetch new crlinformation for all CRL and certificates, use: crlrefresh rpvv

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

    Bushel Goes Into Invitation Mode!

    Yesterday the Bushel team finished some new code. This code allows you to refer your friends to Bushel! This skips the codes that everyone was waiting for and lets people create accounts immediately! From your home screen, click on Invite Friends. Or from the Account screen, scroll down to the section that says “Invite friends to join Bushel”. From here, you can post codes to Facebook, Tweet codes, post codes to LinkedIn and even email them. We’re not going into general availability just yet. But we’re definitely making it easier long-term to sign up and use Bushel! We hope you love it as much as we do! Since we’re still architecting how these…

  • Articles and Books,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    My Take Control Of OS X Server Book Now Available!

    Thanks to all the awesome work from Adam and Tanya Engst, Tidbits announced today that my Take Control of OS X Server is now available! To quote some of the Tidbits writeup: Some projects turn out to be harder than expected, and while Charles Edge’s “Take Control of OS X Server” was one of them, we’re extremely pleased to announce that the full 235-page book is now available in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket versions to help anyone in a home or small office environment looking to get started with Apple’s OS X Server. As you’ll likely remember, we published this book chapter by chapter for TidBITS members, finishing it in early…

  • Bushel,  iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Minneapolis

    Bushel: The Device Enrollment Program (DEP) In Action

    Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP for short) allows you to automatically setup devices with the settings you need on devices that your organization purchases. In Bushel, we give you the ability to link an Apple DEP account up with your Bushel account. This allows devices to add themselves automatically to your Bushel when the devices are activated. We tend to think this is the coolest thing since sliced bread and so we want to make sure you know how to use the feature. Setup Device Enrollment Program in Bushel To get started, log into your Bushel and click on Devices. Here, click the button for Device Enrollment Program. Download your…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  MobileMe,  Network Infrastructure

    Use libimobiledevice To View iOS Logs

    Xcode and other tools can be used to view logs on iOS devices. One of those other tools is libimobiledevice. I usually install libimobiledevice using homebrew, as there are a few dependencies that can be a little annoying. To install homebrew if you haven’t already, run the following command: ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" Once run, follow the prompts to complete the installation. Once homebrew is installed, run the following brew command to download the required components and then libimobiledevice: brew install -v --devel --fresh automake autoconf libtool wget libimobiledevice Then run ideviceinstaller: brew install -v --HEAD --fresh --build-from-source ideviceinstaller Once these are installed, you can plug in a paired…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Startup Profiles

    The profiles command in Yosemite (and Mavericks for that matter), can configure profiles to install at the next boot, rather than immediately. Use the -s to define a startup profile and take note that if it fails, the profile will attempt to install at each subsequent reboot until installed. To use the command, simply add a -s then the -F for the profile and the -f to automatically confirm, as follows (and I like to throw in a -v usually for good measure): profiles -s -F /Profiles/SuperAwesome.mobileconfig -f -v And that’s it. Nice and easy and you now have profiles that only activate when a computer is started up.

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

    qlmanage

    QuickLook scans file contents before you open those files. Usually this just lets you view a file quickly. But you can also use this same technology from the command line to bring about a change to the Finder without actually opening a file. To access QuickLook from the command line, use qlmanage. qlmanage -p ~/Desktop/MyTowel42.pdf While open, click the space bar to go back to your Terminal session. The most notable use case here is that when you use qlmanage you don’t run the risk of changing the date/time stamp of the files.