• Mac OS X

    Capture Smaller Screenshots On Retina Displays In Sierra

    By default, screenshots are pretty big on a retina display on a Sierra machine. Like about 4 times the size they should be. I haven’t found a defaults key I can use yet to reduce them, so I’ve been using this little screenshotting app called RetinaCapture, available at https://gumroad.com/l/retinacapture. Basically, when you’re running it, you just open it up and click on the Window button. There, you can select a window to screenshot. Once you’ve selected the window, you’ll be prompted to save it somewhere with a name. I don’t love having to use any 3rd party apps for my screenshotting workflow. In fact, it bugs the crap out of me. Screens get resized…

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

    Upgrade from OS X to macOS Sierra

    Installing OS X has never been easier than it got in Yosemite, when the installers were moved to the App Store. And since then it’s just gotten easier, and easier. In this article, we’ll upgrade a Mac from OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) to macOS Sierra (10.12), the latest and greatest. The first thing you should do is clone your system (especially if you’re upgrading a server). The second thing you should do is make sure you have a good backup. The third thing you should do is make sure you can swap back to the clone should you need to do so and that your data will remain functional on the…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Script To Sign A Previously Signed .ipa With Your Provisioning Profile

    Organizations frequently have another party write iOS apps for them. When doing so, the organization typically wants to sign the .ipa (how iOS apps are deployed) prior to deploying the app to users. To do so, you would sign the .ipa with your provisioning profile. To make doing so easier, here’s ipasign, a python script that does most of the work for ya’: https://github.com/krypted/ipasign/

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Setup And Manage Profile Manager On macOS Server 5.2

    Profile Manager first appeared in OS X Lion Server as the Apple-provided tool for managing Apple devices, including Mobile Device Management (MDM) for iOS based devices as well as Profile management for OS X based computers, including MacBooks, MacBook Airs, Mac Minis, Mac Pros and iMacs running Mac OS X 10.7 and up. Profile Manager has seen a few more updates over the years, primarily in integrating new MDM options provided by Apple and keeping up with the rapidly changing MDM landscape. Apple has added DEP functionality, content distribution, VPP, and other features over the years. In El Capitan Server, there are plenty of new options, including the ability to deploy…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    statshares in Server 5.2 for macOS Sierra

    I wrote about using the smbutil for DFS in Lion awhile back. I haven’t needed to write anything else as it hadn’t changed since. The statshares option has an -m option to look at a mount path for showing the path to the mount (e.g. if the mount is called krypted this should be something like /Volumes/krypted): smbutil statshares -m /Volumes/krypted When run, you see a list of all the attributes OS X tracks for that mount path, including the name of the server, the user ID (octal), how SMB negotiated an authentication, what version of SMB is running (e.g. SMB_1), the type of share and whether signing, extended security, Unix and…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Delete User Configurable nvram In Sierra (10.12)

    A nifty little feature of nvram is the ability to delete all of the firmware variables you’ve created. This can get helpful if you’ve got a bunch of things that you’ve done to a system and want to remove them all. If you run nvkram followed by a -p option you’ll see all of the configured firmware variables: nvram -p If you run it with a -d you’ll delete the given variables that you define (e.g. boot-args): nvram -d boot-args But, if you run the -c you’ll wipe them all: nvram -c

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    Disable ICMP Rate Limiting In OS X

    Ever wonder why repetitive pings fail after a little while in OS X (e.g. those sent via the -f flag)? By default, OS X has an ICMP rate limit of 250 set. You can increase this or disable, using sysctl. To disable, set the value of net.inet.icmp.icmplim sudo sysctl -w net.inet.icmp.icmplim=0 Happy icmp flooding!

  • iPhone,  JAMF,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  MacAdmins Podcast

    Don’t Forget To Accept The Latest DEP License Agreement TODAY!

    In case you’re using DEP and haven’t noticed this, you need to accept the latest terms of service in the Apple license agreement for DEP if you’re going to continue using the service. I don’t usually post emails I get from Apple, but I can easily see orgs using accounts that don’t have email flowing to anyone that is capable of responding, so I strongly recommend you go in and accept the latest and greatest agreements so your stuff doesn’t break! Here’s the email I got from Apple: Apple Deployment Programs Thank you for participating in the Device Enrollment Program. On September 13 Apple will release updated software license agreements.…