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

    Install Fonts Using Apple Configurator

    I guess someone asked for it, although it wasn’t me… But you can install fonts on Apple devices, using Apple Configurator. To do so, first open Apple Configurator and click on an existing profile or create a new profile for the font installation. Scroll down in the list along the left sidebar until you see Font. Click on Font and then click on Configure. You are then presented with a dialog box to select a font file. Browse to the font you’d like to deploy and then click on Select. Click on the plus sign (+) in the upper right corner of the screen if you’d like to deploy more…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Microsoft Exchange Server,  Network Infrastructure,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  VMware

    Quick nmap Hacks

    The nmap application is a pretty easy-to-use tool that can be used to port scan objects in a network environment. To obtain mmap in an easy-to-use package installer, for OS X check out the download page at http://nmap.org/download.html#macosx (use the same page to grab it for Windows or *nix as well). Once downloaded run the package/rpm/whatever. Before I scan a system, I like to pull the routing table and eth info to determine how scans are being run, which can be run by using the mmap command anong with the —iflist option: nmap —iflist Basic Scanning To then scan a computer, just use the mmap command followed by the host…

  • Active Directory,  cloud,  Consulting,  iPhone,  Kerio,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Microsoft Exchange Server,  Network Infrastructure,  Windows Server

    Dig TTL While Preparing For A Migration

    Any time doing a migration of data from one IP to another where that data has a DNS record that points users towards the data, we need to keep the amount of time it takes to repoint the record to a minimum. To see the TTL of a given record, let’s run dig using +trace, +nocmd to turn off showing the version and query options, +noall to turn off display flags, +answer to still show the answer section of my reponse and most importantly for these purposes +ttlid to toggle showing the TTL on. Here, we’ll use these to lookup the TTL for the https://krypted.com/ A record: dig +trace +nocmd…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  Xsan

    compgen like a boss

    I’ve traditionally used the apropos command to find new commands. But you can also use the compgen command, which looks at the completion matches for given words, to find a list of commands that you can run, simply use compgen with a -c option: compgen -c You can parse information for a single command: compgen -c | grep apropos You can also use -a for aliases, -b for bash built-ins and -k for bash keys, as well as `-A function` for functions. You can then string ’em together: compgen -abckA function I won’t paste the output but I’ll let you pipe it to grep to compgen like a boss. Enjoy!

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Announcement (Cross Post) – JSS Add-on for Autopkg

    (Guest Post by Allister Banks) As Venn diagram circles go, many folks in our community are getting into autopkg, and there’s even more that already use the JAMF Casper Suite. Over on the 318.com blog there’s an announcement for a new ‘processor’ add-on that can be installed with autopkg, that therefore can leverage the JSS API to fulfill many of the functions which up until present only Munki enjoyed. Please do read the release notes and give it a try!

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  VMware,  Xsan

    5 Ways To Manage Background Jobs In A Shell Environment

    When running commands that are going to take awhile, I frequently start them with the nohup command, disown the command from the current session or queue them for later execution. The reason is that if I’m running them from a Terminal or SSH session and the session is broken I want to make sure they complete. To schedule a job for later execution, use at. For example, if I want to perform a simple command, I can schedule it in a minute by running it as an echo piped to at: echo "goldengirlsfix.sh" | at now + 2 minutes Note, if using 1 minute, you’ll need that to be singular.…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Disable Options At Initial Config Time Using Apple Configurator

    In Apple Configurator 1.4.3, which just dropped, you can reduce the setup time for iOS devices. This is pretty helpful in Configuration Centers and when warehousing/performing thin setups of devices. To access this new feature, open Configurator and go to the Prepare screen. From there, you will have the Setup tab. Click on Setup and then in the resultant screen, you will see each of the initial screens in iOS that you can now skip. So put this in perspective, if you check the Location Services box and then prepare a device, even if not restoring a backup, you then won’t be prompted for whether or not you want to…

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

    MacIT Is Coming! #MacIT2014

    Last year was my first year in many not being able to make it to MacIT. This year, I made it a priority to get out to the area and I’m glad to report the good people that select speakers elected to have me join in the revelry. If you haven’t yet made plans to get to San Francisco from March 26th to the 29th you should. While the speakers and sessions haven’t been officially announced, the page that they should appear on soon is http://www.macitconf.com/sessions. For more information on the logistics around the conference, check out http://www.macitconf.com. Look forward to seeing you there!

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Reindex Spotlight from the Command Line

    Spotlight is really a simple tool. Spotlight consists of mds, a command that is the metadata server, mdworker, the pawn that mds sends to scan objects and index them and then the three command lines of mdutil (manage the indexes), mdls (list metadata of an object) and mdfind, which as the name implies, finds things. All of this is used to keep a database called .store.db nested under .Spotlight-V100 at the root of each volume that’s been indexed. To reindex Spotlight from the command line, we’ll use mdutil. From a command prompt, enter the following to index your boot volume. sudo mdutil -E / Or an external drive named krypted:…