• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    To Hex And Back

    The xxd is a bash command in Linux and macOS that is used to take a hexdump (convert a string to hex), or convert hex back to a string. To use xxd, just call it with a couple of options. Below, we’ll use the -p option to export into plain hexdump, and we’ll quote it and the <<< is to take input rather than a file name to convert (the default behavior), as follows: xxd -p <<< "hey it's a string" The output would be a hex string, as follows: 6865792069742773206120737472696e670a Then use the -r option to revert your hex back to text. Since xxd doesn’t allow for a positional…

  • MacAdmins Podcast

    Episode 29 of the MacAdmins Podcast: Just Us Chickens

    <iframe style=”border: none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5219905/height/90/width/640/theme/custom/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87A93A/” height=”90″ width=”640″ scrolling=”no”  allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>

  • Mac OS X Server

    Export All Profile Manager Data Into CSV

    If you fire up a connection to Postgres on a Profile Manager server, you can see a list of all the databases and tables on the server, respectively: sudo -u _devicemgr psql -h /Library/Server/ProfileManager/Config/var/PostgreSQL devicemgr_v2m0 devicemgr_v2m0=# \list devicemgr_v2m0=# \dt The list of tables is as follows: Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges ----------------+------------+----------+---------+-------+--------------------------- devicemgr_v2m0 | _devicemgr | UTF8 | C | C | postgres | _devicemgr | UTF8 | C | C | template0 | _devicemgr | UTF8 | C | C | =c/_devicemgr + | | | | | _devicemgr=CTc/_devicemgr template1 | _devicemgr | UTF8 | C | C | =c/_devicemgr + |…

  • Articles and Books

    Perfecting Your Sales Pitch

    My latest Inc.com piece is up. This one focuses on perfecting your sales pitch. It starts as follows: It’s hard to make a sale if you have a lousy sales pitch. Delivering fresh pitches that allow your product or service to stand out from the others is job number one in sales. So how do you incite interest rather than yawns? Here are six simple tips. You can find the rest of the article here: http://www.inc.com/charles-edge/how-to-pitch-your-product-in-6-easy-steps.html.

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Decrease Time Delays When Scripting Safari

    When you’re regression testing, you frequently just don’t want any delays for scripts unless you intentionally sleep your scripts. By default Safari has an internal delay that I’d totally forgotten about. So if your GUI scripts (yes, I know, yuck) are taking too long to run, check this out and see if it helps: defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0 With a script I was recently working on, this made the thing take about an hour less. Might help for your stuffs, might not. If not, to undo: defaults delete com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay Enjoy.

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    App Translocation Services In OS X 10.12

    The “What’s New in macOS” page for Sierra (10.12) lays out a little known change that a colleague at Jamf was working on the other day (hat tip to Brock): Starting in macOS 10.12, you can no longer provide external code or data alongside your code-signed app in a zip archive or unsigned disk image. An app distributed outside the Mac App Store runs from a randomized path when it is launched and so cannot access such external resources. To provide secure execution, code sign your disk image itself using the codesign tool, or distribute your app through the Mac App Store. For more information, see the updated revision to…

  • JAMF,  Mac Security

    Jamf Pro Extension Attribute For TouchID

    Built a quick extension attribute for Jamf Pro environments to check if TouchID is enabled and report back a string in $result – this could easily be modified and so I commented a few pointers for environments that might need to modify it (e.g. to check for user-level as it’s currently system-level). To see/have the code, check https://github.com/krypted/TouchID_check.