Apple has a number of different logging APIs. For the past few releases, Apple has tried to capture everything possible in logs, creating what many administrators and developers might consider to be a lot of chatter. As such, an entirely new interface needed to be developed to categorize and filter messages sent into system logs. Writing Logs The logger command is still used to create entries in system logs. However, if you are then using tail to view /var/log/system.log then you will notice that you no longer see your entry being written. This is because as the logs being created in macOS have gotten more complex, the tools to read…
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Augmenting defaults domain settings within Apps
Some apps have defaults domains that don’t work the same as other apps and you need to use the -app option in defaults. This option is available for most apps, and sometimes I’ll use it to specifically crawl around for a specific setting I’m looking for. But for other apps, you need to interact with them there. So let’s look at Eclipse. Here, we can do a read with -app followed by the path: defaults read -app /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/ The output would be as follows: { NSNavLastRootDirectory = “~/smb/smb”; NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForOpenMode = “{712, 426}”; NSScrollAnimationEnabled = 0; WebKitJavaEnabled = 0; } Now, let’s say you had a specific setting, like fixing an…
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Episode 38 of the MacAdmin Podcast, with plenty of WWDC predictionating
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Early Bird Registration for the MacDeployment Conference Extended to Thursday
From Anthony Reimer: The MacDeployment Conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada has extended the “early bird” registration rate through this Thursday. Only CAD$179+GST gets you a 2-day conference with a diverse speaker group from across North America. (One day rate also available.) For more information and to register, go to http://macdeployment.ca
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Episode 37 of the MacAdmins Podcast: F/OSS MDMs with Victor Vrantchan and Jesse Peterson
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Scripting Instances On Google Cloud From A Mac
Over the users I’ve written a good bit about pushing a workload off to a virtual machine sitting in a data center somewhere. The Google CloudPlatform has matured a lot and I haven’t really gotten around to writing about it. So… It’s worth going into their SDK and what it looks like from a shell using some quick examples. For starters, you’ll need an account with Google Cloud Platform, at cloud.google.com and you’ll want to go ahead and login to the interface, which is pretty self-explanatory (although at first you might have to hunt a little for some of the more finely grained features, like zoning virtual instances. The SDK…
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Is This Bash Command A Builtin?
Builtin commands are always kinda’ interesting. At first glance, it’s hard to know which commands are builtins. Luckily, there’s a command that I rarely use, called… command. If you run command with the -V flag it will tell you if the command is a builtin: command -V cd cd is a shell builtin If you run a command that isn’t a builtin command -V ls ls is /bin/ls Some builtins are in /bin (like echo). But not all builtins are in /bin. Some are in /usr/bin (like cd). Information about how to use builtins is built into the help command rather than standalone man pages. So, if you do help…
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Jamf Now, Now In German And Japanese
If you’re in need of MDM in Japanese or German, Jamf Now shipped support for those languages last week. To switch languages, click on your name once logged in, and then click on the language you would like to use. Enjoy.
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Using mdmclient on macOS
I mentioned mdmclient when I gave the talk on the inner workings of Mobile Device Management, or MDM. There, I spent a lot of time on APNs and profiles, but just kinda’ spoke about mdmclient in terms of it being the agent that runs on macOS to provide mdm parity for the Mac. The mdmclient binary is located at /usr/libexec/mdmclient and provides pretty limited access to see how the Mac reacts to and interprets information coming from a device management provider. I had been meaning to do a write-up on mdmclient and document what it can do since it first shipped. But as luck would have it, @Mosen on the…
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Extension Attribute to Grab iTunes Hashes for VPP on macOS
Here’s a new extension attribute at https://github.com/krypted/ituneshash/blob/master/ituneshash.sh for grabbing the hash ID used for iTunes Store accounts, useful with VPP: #!/bin/sh # # # #Jamf Pro Extension Attribute to return the App Store Account Hash for iTunes #Note that the return is null if one is not found # # result=`/usr/libexec/mdmclient QueryAppInstallation | grep iTunesStoreAccountHash | sed '/.*\"\(.*\)\".*/ s//\1/g'` echo "<result>$result</result>" The output is something like: <result>oBSmAAAa0nUAAACBHe5AaALlNBg=</result> Which would bring the string into Jamf Pro