• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Network Infrastructure

    The Cumulus Command Line Interface

    Cumulus comes with a number of commands installed in /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server. The assets can be in a shared directory location, such as an NFS mount mapped to /cumulus or /Volumes/Cumulus. But in the /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server directory there are a number of commands that can be pretty useful. For example, the stop-admin, stop-cumulus, start-cumulus and start-admin commands can be used to restart the Cumulus using a simple ARD template: /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server/stop-admin.sh /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server/stop-cumulus.sh sleep 30 /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server/start-cumulus.sh /usr/local/Cumulus_Workgroup_Server/start-admin.sh There are others, such as status.sh, which shows size of repository, PIDs, and the time running. The repair.sh can be used to repair the database and remove-admin.sh and remove-cumulus.sh can uninstall the admin console and cumulus servers respectively…

  • cloud,  FileMaker,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Network Infrastructure,  Time Machine,  Xsan

    Obtain Information From Watchman Monitoring Using a Script

    Watchman Monitoring is a tool used to monitor computers. I’ve noticed recently that there’s a lot of traffic on the Watchman Monitoring email list that shows people want a great little (and by little I mean inexpensive from a compute time standpoint) monitoring tool to become a RMM (Remote Management and Monitoring) tool. The difference here is in “Management.” Many of us actually don’t want a monitoring tool to become a management tool unless we are very deliberate about what we do with it. For example, that script that takes a machine name of ‘rm -Rf /’ that some ironic hipster of a user decided to name their hard drive…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Server Admin Web Modules, curl & You

    Since the early days, OS X Server has supported performing the serveradmin commands through a web interface. This interface was accessible at the address of the server followed by a colon and then 311 in a web browser. This feature was disabled by default in Mountain Lion. But fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true, so we’re going to turn it back on. To enable, use the following command: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.servermgrd requireUserAgent -bool false Once done, open https://127.0.0.1:311 in a web browser, or replace 127.0.0.1 with the address of the server if accessing from another location. This is stimulating, but we’re out of…

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Programmatically Running And Looping Keynote Presentations

    These days, you can spend a lot of money buying really nice digital signage tools. And if you’re doing so, then you likely have some pretty dynamic content you’d like to load. Something that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a dynamic content platform, but which is nice for the quick presentation that you whip up and want to use for a form of digital signage is Keynote presentations. These are inexpensive and can be played on monitors through AirPlay or directly through a Mac Mini connected to a television or big monitor. Great for a monitor in the company lobby, the hallway in the school or for subliminal messaging at…

  • Home Automation,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Xsan

    Lights Out Managing Mac Mini Servers with Vera

    There is no Lights Out Management for a Mac mini Server (btw, am I the only one that noticed that these are now called Mac mini with Lion Server, where mini isn’t capitalized). While the Mac mini Server doesn’t have the Lights Out Management (LOM)/IPMI chips in it, there are a few things that we can control anyway. Convention would say that we’d get a NetBotz card for that spiffy APC we’ve got, which can do minor automation and even a little environmental monitoring. And there are a few other systems out there that can do similar tasks. But I’m a home automation nerd these days. So I decided to…

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

    Managing iOS Devices with Apple Configurator

    My traditional interpretation of Apple’s vision on how iOS devices are used is that everyone has an AppleID. That AppleID enables them to access their apps from any iOS device they own or Mac that they own. That AppleID enables them to access mail, contacts, calendars and even files through iCloud. That AppleID also allows users to remotely wipe their device through Find iPhone and track their friends iOS devices (as in social networking via breadcrumb tracking) through Find Friends. All of this “Just Works” in a consumer sense. And it even allows for a little sharing of content across devices you own. However, larger organizations need more. They need…

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

    Using the CrashPlan Pro REST API

    CrashPlan Pro Server is a pretty cool tool with a lot of great features that can be used to back up client computers. There are a lot of things that CrashPlan Pro is good at out of the box, but there are also a lot of other things that CrashPlan Pro wasn’t intended for that it could be good at, given a little additional flexibility. The REST API that CrashPlan Pro uses provides a little flexibility and as with most APIs I would expect it to provide even more as time goes on. I often hear people run away screaming when REST comes up, thinking they’re going to have to…

  • sites,  Social Networking

    10 Worst MySpace Apps

    One of the contributors to the success that Facebook has had in the social networking world is the ability for savvy developers to build applications. MySpace has been picking up scraps from the Facebook strategy for some time and has followed suit with the ability to integrate custom applications. Now that MySpace has more than 50 pages of applications, I wanted to do a 10 best MySpace applications post. But beyond the RSS feeder I mentioned earlier and a couple of interesting apps that were also on Facebook (and were better in the Facebook iteration) I just couldn’t do it. Therefore, let’s take a look at some of the high…

  • sites

    5 Tools for Extending Google Apps

    Google Apps has a nice little API that was developed for interfacing with it programatically. Well, a number of other vendors have been building around it for a little while and there’s starting to be a nice little suite. Here are some to look at: Manymoon: Allows more granular document sharing, mail management and security with your documents, tasks and projects Socialwok: Allows you to build a social network on top of Google Apps Smartsheet: Project, sales pipeline and resource tracking. Allows for collaboration with external users as well. Tripit: allows you to see your travel plans and collaborate with others on their travel plans (wish American Express Travel had…

  • Active Directory,  Mac OS X

    Snow Leopard + SkyHook = Kerb Problems?

    In the Date and Time System Preference pane there is now an option to enable “Set time zone automatically using current location”. Assuming you have a Mac OS X computer with Wi-Fi and you use this option (which is not enabled by default) then your portable looks up your location automatically using the wireless access points surrounding you, which can then be looked up against the Skyhook database API and then changes your time zone based on your physical location. However, if your system looks back to the IP address of the KDC and sees a time offset that is greater than 5 minutes a few people have asked me…