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
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Enable AutoAdminLogon For Windows Deployments
There are 3 registry keys that admins in the Windows world use to enable automatic logins, often required for deployments that require a logged in user to setup user environments, such as configuring app deployments as part of a mass deployment. The required keys in the registry are:
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How To View What Payloads Do To Devices
You can see exactly what Bushel, and other MDM platforms do to your OS X devices using the System Information utility. As with all Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that interface with OS X, you can use the About this Mac menu item under the Apple menu at the top of the screen to bring up the System Information utility. When you open this tool, you will see a lot of information that can be derived about your devices. Scroll down the list and click on Profiles. Here, you will see all of the Device and User profiles that have been installed on your computer, the payloads within each profile and…
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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…
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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…
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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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Upgrade to OS X Yosemite
Installing OS X has never been easier than in Yosemite. In this article, we’ll look at upgrading a Mac from OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). 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. Once you’re sure that you have a fallback plan, let’s get started by downloading OS X Yosemite from the App Store. Once downloaded, you’ll see Install…
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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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Create a Yosemite Installation Drive
A bootable installer is one of the fastest ways to install Yosemite. Rather than copy the installer to a local drive you can run it right off a USB disk (or Thunderbolt if you dare). Such a little USB drive would be similar to the sticks that came with the older MacBook Air, when we were all still sitting around wondering how you would ever install the OS on a computer with no optical media or Ethernet otherwise. Luckily, Apple loves us. To make a bootable USB/flash drive of Yosemite like the one that used to come with the MacBook Air, first name the USB drive. I’ll use yosinstall for…