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…
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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…
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Listen To iOS Network Communications
OS X has a command called rvictl, which can be used to proxy network communications from iOS devices through a computer over what’s known as a Remote Virtual Interface, or RVI. To setup an rvi, you’ll need the udid of a device and the device will need to be plugged into a Mac and have the device paired to the Mac. This may seem like a lot but if you’ve followed along with a couple of the other articles I’ve done recently this should be pretty simple. First we’ll pair: idevicepair pair Then tap Trust on the device itself. Then we’ll grab that udid with idevice_id: idevice_id -l Next, we’ll…
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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.
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Yosemite and statshares in smbutil
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 large files are supported. Additionally, if you’d like to see the attributes for all shares, use the -a option after statshares: smbutil…
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Directory Utility in Yosemite. I’m not Dead Yet… Mapping Attributes 101
The Directory Utility application has moved to /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications. Once open, you can use it to bind to directory services, change search policies and even dink around with NIS if you still rock the flannel with your ripped up jeans. But, the thing that I tend to do in Directory Utility the most is look at user and group attributes. To do so, open Directory Utility and click on the Directory Editor tab. In the bar directly below, you’ll see Viewing and In Node. The Viewing option is what type of object you’re going to look at. The In Node option shows the directory domain you’re viewing. Below, we show the local users in…
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Yosemite Server Guide/Page Live
A blog is a great way to communicate information. But pedagogy, yo… Blogs are not great ways to teach in a guided manner. But they can be. So with a little Table of Contents, or a Guide of sorts, you can easily communicate in a fashion similar to a book. And this makes the third annual OS X Server Guide that I’m publishing in this manner; the guides for Mavericks and Mountain Lion are still available. I doubt I’ll ever actually bother to take them down. I’ve been working on getting the annual guide up for a few weeks and while there are still some posts remaining, but it’s basically done (some articles…
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Upgrading To OS X Server (4.0) on Yosemite
Setting up OS X Server has never been easier. Neither has upgrading OS X Server. In this article, we’ll look at upgrading a Mac from OS X 10.8 or 10.9 running Server 2 or Server 3 to OS X 10.10 (Mavericks) running Server 4. The first thing you should do is clone your system. 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 backup. The fourth thing you should do is repeat all that…
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Encrypt OS X Yosemite Server
Encrypting a volume in OS X Yosemite couldn’t be easier. In this article, we will look at three ways to encrypt OS X Yosemite volumes. The reason there are three ways is that booted volumes and non-booted volumes have different methods for enabling encryption. Encrypting Attached Storage For non-boot volumes, just control-click or right-click on them and then click on Encrypt “VOLUMENAME” where the name of the volume is in quotes. When prompted, provide an encryption password for the volume, verify that password and if you so choose, provide a hint. Once the encryption process has begun, the entry previously clicked on says Encrypting “VOLUMENAME” where the name of the…
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Yosemite Server And Logs
OS X Yosemite running the Server app has a lot of scripts used for enabling services, setting states, changing hostnames and the like. Once upon a time there was a script for OS X Server called server setup. It was a beautiful but too simplistic kind of script. Today, much of that logic has been moved out into more granular scripts, kept in /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup, used by the server to perform all kinds of tasks. These scripts are, like a lot of other things in Yosemite Server. Some of these include the configuration of amavisd, docecot and alerts. These scripts can also be used for migrating services and data. Sometimes the…