SSH allows administrators to connect to another computer using a secure shell, or command line environment. ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) allows screen sharing, remote scripts and other administrative goodness. You can also connect to a server using the Server app running on a client computer. To enable any or all of these, open the Server app (Server 5.2 for Sierra), click on the name of the server, click the Settings tab and then click on the checkbox for what you’d like to enter. All of these can be enabled and managed from the command line as well. The traditional way to enable Apple Remote Desktop is using the kickstart command.…
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Configure Xsan Clients In Server 5.2
Yosemite brought Xsan 4, which included a whole new way to add clients to an Xsan. Xsan Admin is gone, as of El Capitan, but unchanged from then to macOS Sierra (other than a couple of binaries moving around). These days, instead of scanning the network using Xsan Admin. we’ll be adding clients using a Configuration Profile. This is actually a much more similar process to adding Xsan clients to a StorNext environment than it is to adding clients to Metadata Controllers running Xsan 3 and below. But instead of making a fsnameservers file, we’re plugging that information into a profile, which will do that work on the client on our behalf.…
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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.…
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Episode 11 Of The MacAdmins Podcast
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Hide Items On Your Desktop In OS X
When speaking to a group of people, I once created a folder called Old and then moved all my files in there. However, you can create a temporary desktop that shows as clean and empty. To do so, write the CreateDesktop key in the com.apple.finder defaults domain, with a setting of false, as follows: defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false Then restart the Finder and it will show crisp and new: killall Finder Then once you’re done, delete the temporary desktop, by deleting the key, as follows: defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop Then restart the Finder to see your files again: killall Finder
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Disable The Connect To Server Option
You can disable the Connect to Server menu in OS X. This can be done via MDM or using defaults. To do so with the defaults command, send a ProhibitConnectTo key into com.apple.finder as True and then restart the Finder, as follows using the defaults command: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitConnectTo -bool true ; killall Finder To undo: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitConnectTo -bool false
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Scripting Around Dropping Network Connections In OS X
Dropping network connections can be incredibly frustrating. And finding the source can be a challenge. Over the years, I’ve found a number of troubleshooting methods, but the intermittent drop can be the worse to troubleshoot around. When this happens, I’ve occasionally resorted to scripting around failures, and dumping information into a log file to find the issue. For example, you may find that when a network connection fails, you have a very strong signal somewhere, or that you have a very weak signal on all networks. I’ve found there are three pretty simple commands to test joining/unjoining, and using networks (beyond the standard pings or port scans on hosts). The…
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Programmatically Grab The Location Of An Account
Namespace conflicts can be interesting. Especially with multiple local domains. To grab the path of a directory domain of a currently logged in user (when running as the user) using a script, you can run the following: dscl . -read /Users/`whoami` | grep AppleMetaNodeLocation | awk '{print $2}' You can then replace the string we’re using with grep if you’d like to pull a different attribute from the user record, you’d use the following: dscl . -read /Users/`whoami` | grep UniqueID | awk '{print $2}'
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Programmatically Grab The Name Of Your MDM Enrollment Profile In OS X
Just a quick one-liner. Enjoy. profiles -Cv | grep Enrollment | awk '{ s = ""; for (i = 5; i <= NF; i++) s = s $i " "; print s }'
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Reddit AMA Going Now
An hour into my first Reddit AMA with some super-excellent JAMFs! AMA w/ Charles Edge and the Apple management experts at JAMF Software from macsysadmin