It’s summer! And at many schools that means that the kids are gone and it’s time to start imaging again. And imaging means a lot of rebooting holding down the N key. But wait, you have ARD access into all those computers. And you have automated imaging tools. This means you can image the whole school from the comfort of your cabin out by the lake. Just use ARD and a little automation and you’ll be fishing in no time! If you haven’t used the bless command to restart a client to NetBoot server then you’re missing out. The bless command is used to set the boot drive that a…
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Using the ExtremeZ-IP Command Line
When you are configuring ExtremeZ-IP as a print server, you will need to set up and configure each printer. However, if you already have setup and configured printer queues for the Windows server, you can import existing queues into ExtremeZ-IP. This can be done programatically via the ExtremeZ-IP EZIPUTIL command line tool. EZIPUTIL has a number of options, whereby the SERVER option is used to configure global settings for ExtremeZ-IP, VOLUME is used to create, edit and delete print queues and PRINT is used to manage shared print queues. Each of the options also has a number of switches for the feature(s) that are being managed. These are structured as…
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Free Junos
For some time, Juniper has been agressively trying to win converts from Cisco. Not only in terms of sales, but also the hearts and minds of the engineers who influence purchasing decisions. Aggressively going after engineers has meant that for years, Juniper has made their certifications essentially free for those of us who were certified with Cisco. But now, they’re starting to cast their net a little wider and go after getting anyone and everyone certified for free, provided of course that you can pass the test. Juniper’s Junos is being offered for free for a limited time. If you’re interested in beefing up your security and/or networking skills, this…
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A Little Light Reading
The last book (far right, Enterprise Mac Managed Preferences) is fresh, exciting (to me at least) and unique in that it is the most comprehensive information regarding managed preferences you can find. Management en masse of Mac OS X is very lucky to have this compendium. If the chapter in our Enterprise Integration book left you wanting more information about managed preferences then this book is for you!
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Symantec Acquires PGP & GuardianEdge
Today Symantec announced that it is acquiring PGP. I certainly hope they treat the Mac PGP client better than they’ve treated some of their other Mac clients. This move brings Symantec squarely into the encryption space. They encrypt full disks (including the boot volume of Mac OS X), portables, file servers, jump drives, Blackberry and PDFs. They have a mature centralized key management solution (after all, all encryptions seems to be key based these days) and even recently added application control to their portfolio, to block malware. Perhaps the last is why Symantec went ahead and picked them up. Or perhaps it’s because they just like buying things at Symantec.…
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NAS, Clouds & Backup
NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are a popular alternative to providing centralized file services to smaller environments. This includes devices such as the Seagate BlackArmor, the DroboShare NAS and the Netgear ReadyNAS Pro. These are inexpensive as compared to an actual server, they require less management and they often come with some pretty compelling features. But one of the primary reasons to buy a NAS can end up being a potential pain point as well: they require less management than a server because they can’t do as much as a server can. For example, the option to replicate between two of them. Most have NAS to NAS replication built in. However, that…
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Testing Speed
www.speedtest.net is a nice site that allows you to test the speed of your Internet connection for free. They also have a free companion iPhone app that allows you to test the speed of an Internet connection without actually opening up your laptop.
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Simple Networking Commands
Troubleshooting the network is faster and more thorough when it is done using the command line. Here are some simple command-line utilities that can perform a variety of tasks that can help when administering many services and multiuser environments: Whoami lists the user you are currently logged in as from the command line. Who lists the users logged onto your system. Id shows a list of all defined users and groups whether they are actually logged in. Groups <userid> shows a list of all the groups a user is in. Whois lists ownership information for domains. Hostname lists the name of the computer you are currently working on. You can…
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The Cisco ASA 5500
I’ve been a fan of the Cisco ASA since it was introduced but always seemed to have a problem figuring out all the different models. Cisco now has a snappy little model comparison that can be found here. A little less helpful, but nice nonetheless is the comparison page for the 1000 Series Aggregation Service Routers. But then there’s the PIX and the Cisco IOS devices. It’s still a lot of different stuff to keep track of and while it’s a lengthy read this page may help with that as it goes through each one…
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Adding DHCP Options in Mac OS X Server
Mac OS X Server comes with a number of DHCP options available; most notably the options available in the GUI. But what about options that aren’t available in the GUI, such as NTP. Well, using /etc/bootpd.plist, the same file we used to define servers allowed to relay, you can also define other options. These begin with the following keys that can be added into your property list: dhcp_time_offset (option 2) dhcp_router (option 3) dhcp_domain_name_server (option 6) dhcp_domain_name (option 15) dhcp_network_time_protocol_servers (option 42) dhcp_nb_over_tcpip_name_server (option 44) dhcp_nb__over_tcpip_dgram_dist_server (option 45) dhcp_nb_over_tcpip_node_type (option 46) dhcp_nb_over_tcpip_scope (option 47) dhcp_smtp_server (option 69) dhcp_pop3_server (option 70) dhcp_nntp_server (option 71) dhcp_ldap_url (option 95) dhcp_netinfo_server_address (option 112) dhcp_netinfo_server_tag…