The past couple of years has forced me to rethink many of my recommendations for how you backup computers in small office and home environments. Previously, I would have said that you could use a disk attached to an Apple AirPort. But the AirPort Base Station is no longer being made. Previously, I would have said you could use Time Machine Server, a service built into macOS Server in 5.4 and below. But that service is no longer being made in macOS Server by Apple and is now found in the Sharing System Preference pane . Previously, I might have even said to use the home edition of CrashPlan, which…
-
-
Embracing (and managing) tech for your iGen child
I have a new article for Thrive Global (another Arianna Huffington property) available at Thrive Global. This one is on “Tools and best practices on monitoring and teaching your kids responsible mobile device use.” It starts out like this: My world changed when I awoke one day to find my 4-year-old daughter with a tablet in her hands, watching Transformers. The sight unleashed a handful of worries I hadn’t before experienced. Prior to that morning, I knew her to be fan of Star Wars figures, Legos and stuffed animals. And while I wasn’t displeased by her choice to watch a Michael Bay movie, I did start thinking about what else…
-
Replace the Web Services in macOS Server with MAMP Pro
In an earlier article, I mentioned that MAMP Pro was still the best native GUI for managing web services on the Mac, now that macOS Server will no longer serve up those patchy services. After we cover the management in this article, you’ll likely understand why it comes it at $59. So you’ve installed MAMP. And you need more than the few basic buttons available there. So MAMP Pro came with it and you can try it for a couple of weeks for free. When you open MAMP Pro, you’ll see a screen where you can perform a number of management tasks. This is a more traditional side-bar-driven screen that…
-
MacAdmins Podcast Episode 70: Tim Perfitt, Twocanoes Software
-
Node Plugin To Embed Device Details From Jamf Pro Into Jira Service Desk
Been working on a new plugin to embed device details from Jamf Pro into Jira Service Desk. It looks a little like this: To access the plugin, see the links below. https://github.com/krypted/Jira-Device-Lookups-in-Jamf
-
macOS Server Changes Coming Soon To A Server Near You
Many of the people that read my articles undoubtedly arleady know this, but Apple has announced a sharp reduction in the number of services provided. Per this article, the Calendar, Contacts, DHCP, DNS, Mail, Messages, NetInstall, VPN, Websites, and Wiki services are being deprecated and Apple has provided a few services, per service, that they recommend moving to. Those services, per the above article, include the following: Calendar Calendar and Contacts Server DavMail Radicale Contacts Calendar and Contacts Server DavMail Citadel DHCP Kea Dnsmasq FreeRADIUS DNS BIND Unbound KnotDNS Mail KerioConnect dovecot/Postfix Courier Messages ejabberd Openfire Prosody NetInstall NetSUS BSDPy VPN OpenVPN SoftEther VPN Tcpcrypt Websites Apache HTTP Server Nginx Lighttpd…
-
Episode 63 of the MacAdmins Podcast: Security as Culture with Diana Birsan
-
20 Constants In Software Development
My latest Huffington Post article, called 20 Constants In Software Development is up. It starts out like this: There are so many things I wish people had told me when I was in school, or earlier in my career. Things that aren’t variable between organizations you work with, or even teams you work in. So I thought I’d jot a few down of these for software development teams (if only to prove that no, despite what product managers say, you aren’t crazy). So here goes: A project will never have enough people to build all the features you want. Period. Less features means fewer defects. As a software project nears…
-
Setup The Caching Service On macOS High Sierra
High Sierra sees the Caching service moved out of macOS Server and into the client macOS. This means administrators no longer need to run the Server app on caching servers. Given the fact that the Caching service only stores volatile data easily recreated by caching updates again, there’s no need to back the service up, and it doesn’t interact with users or groups, so it’s easily divested from the rest of the Server services. And the setup of the Caching service has never been easier. To do so, first open System Preferences and click on the Sharing System Preferences pane. From here, click on the checkbox for Content Caching to…
-
Install macOS Server 5.4 On A Mac Running macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
The first thing you’ll want to do on any server is setup the networking for the computer. To do this, open the System Preferences and click on Network. You usually want to use a wired Ethernet connection on a server, but in this case we’ll be using Wi-Fi. Here, click on the Wi-Fi interface and then click on the Advanced… button. At the setup screen for the interface, provide a good static IP address. Your network administrator can provide this fairly easily. Here, make sure you have an IP address and a subnet mask. Since we need to install the Server app from the Mac App Store, and that’s on the Internet,…