SSH allows administrators to connect to another computer using a secure shell, or command line environment. ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) allows screen sharing, remote scripts and other administrative goodness. You can also connect to a server using the Server app running on a client computer. To enable any or all of these, open the Server app (Server 5 for El Capitan and Yosemite), click on the name of the server, click the Settings tab and then click on the checkbox for what you’d like to enter. All of these can be enabled and managed from the command line as well. The traditional way to enable Apple Remote Desktop is using…
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Configure SSH, ARD and SNMP In OS X Yosemite Server
SSH allows administrators to connect to another computer using a secure shell, or command line environment. ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) allows screen sharing, remote scripts and other administrative goodness. SNMP allows for remote monitoring of a server. You can also connect to a server using the Server app running on a client computer. To enable all of these except SNMP, open the Server app (Server 3), click on the name of the server, click the Settings tab and then click on the checkbox for what you’d like to enter. All of these can be enabled and managed from the command line as well. The traditional way to enable Apple Remote…
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ARD 3.7
Apple has released the client and server updates for Apple Remote Desktop. Both are now available on the App Store. For official information of the server update, see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5896?viewlocale=en_US. New features include: Support for OS X Mavericks A shared clipboard which allows automatic copy and paste between local and remote computers Improved support for Mac systems with multiple displays or multiple IP addresses Enhanced multi-observe with gesture support for swiping between screens Output of remote UNIX commands is no longer truncated The client update documentation is at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5896?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US.
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Enable SSH, ARD, SNMP & the Remote Server App Use In OS X Server (Mavericks)
SSH allows administrators to connect to another computer using a secure shell, or command line environment. ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) allows screen sharing, remote scripts and other administrative goodness. SNMP allows for remote monitoring of a server. You can also connect to a server using the Server app running on a client computer. To enable all of these except SNMP, open the Server app (Server 3), click on the name of the server, click the Settings tab and then click on the checkbox for what you’d like to enter. All of these can be enabled and managed from the command line as well. The traditional way to enable Apple Remote…
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Connect to Currently Logged In User Using ARD
When you’re kickstarting ARD/Screen Sharing, you might notice times when you are asked if you want to connect to the local logged in user or to a new session, which shows the login window. In most cases, I want to connect to the console user, or that locally logged in user. To go right there, instead of seeing the OS X login window, you can use the defaults command to write a VNCAlwaysStartOnConsole key (boolean, true) into com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist in /Library/Preferences, as follows: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement VNCAlwaysStartOnConsole -bool true The newer features here are pretty cool and really nice to have, but I’ve now added this to a lot of my…
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Disable Dock Autohide
One of those annoying little things is when you ARD into a system and the Dock is nowhere to be seen. Why do we (or should I say they) autohide Docks on servers? Either way, when I ARD into a box and I don’t see a Dock I have this line saved as a Template: defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false; killall Dock By writing an autohide key that is false into com.apple.dock for the currently logged in user, I don’t have to deal with the Dock disappearing any more. You need to kill the Dock and let it respawn, thus the killall as well. Once I’m done working with…
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Enabling ARD, SSH & SNMP On Mountain Lion Server Using serveradmin
The traditional way to enable Apple Remote Desktop is using the kickstart command. But there’s a simpler way in OS X Mountain Lion Server. To do so, use the serveradmin command. To enable ARD using the serveradmin command, use the settings option, with info:enableARD to set the payload to yes: sudo serveradmin settings info:enableARD = yes Once run, open System Preferences and click on Sharing. The Remote Management box is then checked and the local administrative user has access to ARD into the host. The Server app will also have the “Enable screen sharing and remote management” option checked. There are also a few other commands that can be used…
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One Teletype to Bind Them (Or, Clustered SSH for OS X)
When working at scale, and particularly with hosts that need to have the same configuration or you want to perform the same queries on, the issue becomes how do I ‘reach out and touch’ my fleet? Without centralized infrastructure backed by a messaging broker or a heavier process that leaves hooks in systems and/or requires its own domain specific language, sometimes you can get by with… plain ol’ ssh. Apple Remote Desktop can take us a lot of the way there, and one of the announced features of Mountain Lion is that screen sharing gets another piece of ARD’s pie, the ability to drag-and-drop files to transfer them to the…
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2012 Penn State MacAdmins Conference
Don’t let the theft of the Paternoville sign fool ya’, State College is as safe as ever. That is, until a bunch of Mac guys descend on the Nittany Lion Shrine. Yes, it’s that time of the year again when Mac guys from around the world (and yes, all of the speakers are male) descend upon Pennsylvania State University from throughout the Big 10 and beyond to discuss the Penn State mascot, the Nittany Lion. Actually, it’s a mountain lion, so we can’t discuss it quite yet at that point, but we can talk about a slightly bigger cat: Lion. Lion deployment, scripted tools, Munki, InstaDMG, Puppet, migrations, “postPC,” PSU…
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Command Keys and ScreenSharing
I like to send the command, control and other system keys to hosts that I’m using ScreenSharing or Remote Desktop to access. But as I recently discovered, not everyone does. You can turn this feature off using the defaults command to augment the DoNotSendSystemKeys key of the com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist property list file. Simply run the following command: defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool YES To turn them back on: defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool NO Or for Remote Desktop, augment the com.apple. defaults write com.apple.RemoteDesktop DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool YES To turn it back off for Remote Desktop: defaults write com.apple.RemoteDesktop DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool NO FYI, if you don’t want to send the command keys…