• Uncategorized

    iPad Deployment

    If you are like me then while the rumor mills were bugging you, you were focused on intel about mass deployment. Todays announcement of the iPad was a huge tell about much of what administrators will need to know, but obviously not all – only time will tell with some things. Little can be easier than deploying a MacBook (or a thousand) if you have the right tools at your disposal. Not so with an iPhone. It comes down to that pesky configuration utility and docking the thing to get the xml file onto it (or visiting a site from a browser). As we’ve seen, for 1 or 2 devices the…

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    Mac OS X Server and Quotas

    There are a number of ways to handle quotas in Mac OS X Server. To enable quotas is simple enough. If you open Server Admin and then click on Share Points and then the volume, you can check the box for enable quotas on this volume. It will take awhile for the data to load once you’ve clicked save, but then it will show you how much space is in each users quota. You’ll then notice the .quota.ops.user and .quota.user files at the root of the file system you just enabled quotas for. If you enable group quotas then you will see .quota.group and .quota.ops.group as well. Since these are…

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    AppleSetupRedux

    AppleSetupRedux is a simple utility for resetting a system back to a factory-type state. Once run, on the next reboot, the Apple Setup Assistant will run so that you can distribute the machine to customers or whatever you might want to do with a machine where the Setup Assistant runs again. AppleSetupRedux AppleSetupRedux can be found on the Apps page of this site.

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Uncategorized

    32-bit System Preferences

    Did you know that System Preferences is a 64-bit application? Stands to reason, but one thing I realized recently while working on some code for a System Preference pane is that 32-bit System Preferences cause System Preferences to react differently. You can use 32-bit preference panes but using them prompts you to quit System Preferences, which relaunches into a 32-bit mode. Going back to 64-bit mode also requires a relaunch. This is a great reason for developers to get their code upgraded sooner rather than later as I can’t imagine this compatibility mode will last forever…

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    Rsync GUI

    Backup Plus is a little donateware app that can be used as a front-end for rsync. It is probably the most feature rich graphical wrapper for rsync that I’ve seen to date and has thus far proven to be spot on with how it runs the commands. Nice little app that, if you’re into rsync-type operations you should definitely check it out.