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

    DeployStudio From the Command Line

    Recently I did a little article on importing computers into DeployStudio lists. I got an overwhelming number of email requests to go a step further and look at importing computers into DeployStudio from the command line. I’m guessing lots of people want to bolt some middleware onto their mass deployment tools (can’t say I blame ’em). The first thing to know is that DeployStudio stores most everything in standard property lists. This includes workflows, computer groups and computers. When you install DeployStudio you selected a location to place your database. For the purpose of this example, we’re going to use /DSDatabase as our location. Within this directory is a folder…

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

    BRU Primer -> Advanced

    In BRU 2, you have 3 tools to use. These include: BRU Server Agent Config (UB) – A tool used to install the agent, which needs to be located on each machine that will be backed up (including the server if it has any data to back up) BRU Server Config (UB) – Used to configure the server daemon, backup server configurations and set passwords to communicate with the server. Also used to set licensing information and perform scans for new tape drives and libraries. BRU Server Console (UB) – Used to configure backup jobs, schedules, etc. To get started, open the BRU Server Config application from the components that…

  • Mac OS X

    Perl Control

    There are a lot of versions of the popular perl scripting language out there, and depending on what version you may have written a script with you might find that using a different version than the one that comes with an OS by default can have a drastic impact on a script. In Mac OS X you can change the default version of perl that the perl and a2p command will use. Before doing so you should check the version of perl being used by default, which can be done using the perl command, followed by the -v option: perl -v By default, the OS currently uses version 5.10.0. To…

  • Final Cut Server

    Archive & Restore Assets with fcsvr_client

    Final Cut Server has an option to archive and restore assets. When archiving an asset, the asset will be moved to a file system path that is represented by the device ID. The archival and restore can be done using the steps shown in this video: The process of archival and restore can be kicked off from the command line, which will initiate the movement of the asset. To archive an asset, you will use the archive verb with the fcsvr_client tool. This will require you to provide the asset ID number along with the device that you will be archiving the asset to. For example, to archive an asset…

  • FileMaker,  Final Cut Server

    Scripting Productions and Assets in Final Cut Server

    When you’re integrating Final Cut Server with other products, you often find yourself writing scripts to perform various tasks. One of those tasks might be to create a new project, or a production as it’s called in Final Cut Server. Because a production can have a number of attributes, a great way to do this is to create a template production and then make copies of it (or clones) when you want to create subsequent projects. To do so, you’ll use the fcsvr_client command, along with the clone verb. The -name option will allow you to set the name of the production which would then be followed by the unique…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Monitoring/Restarting Retrospect

    As of version 8, Retrospect uses port 22024 when the Retrospect Console needs to communicate with the engine. It just so happens that this can become unresponsive when the engine itself decides to stop working. Therefore, if you’re using Retrospect 8, you can run a port scan against port 22024 ( i.e. stroke <IP_ADDRESS> 22024 22024 ) and then restart the engine if it goes unresponsive. To restart the engine, simply unload and then load com.retrospect.launchd.retroengine. For example: /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.launchd.retroengine.plist; /bin/launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.launchd.retroengine.plist I have found that if you alter the nice value that the engine crashes less (not that I’m saying that it crashes a lot or is buggy…

  • Unix,  Windows Server,  Xsan

    Setting up CHAP on LeftHand w/ CLI

    LeftHand Storage uses the cliq command line for configuring their devices. cliq isn’t necessarily interactive and so we end up needing to specify the username, password and IP of the device with each command (although you can setup a key as well if you’re going to be doing automated tasks). One task that I’ve found to be pretty common is to use cliq to enable Chap authentication for volumes. To do so you’ll use the assignVolumeChap verb. Along with the assignVolumeChap verb you will need a number of options, each with an = for the payload of the option and delimited with a space between them. When using the assignVolumeChap…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Enabling RAID Mirrors Redux

    When new versions of operating systems come out sometimes articles need to be updated. It’s always nice when someone else does the hard part. Recently, Ben Levy, an Apple Consultant from Los Angeles, did some work on an article I did awhile back. To quote Ben, the new procedure is to: 1. Boot from something other than your intended RAIDed boot drive, open Terminal and use diskutil list to identify the relevant disks and partitions. 2. diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disk0s2 – (assuming correctly identified slice, yours may be different) This command turns your primary disk into a RAID mirror without a mirror 3. Reboot back to your boot drive…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Command Line ALF Redux

    Note: I had previously written this article for Mac OS X 10.5 but have put in a few updates and so thought it might be time to repost it. Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6 have a multitude of ways to keep data from coming or going from a system. The traditional way is to use ipfw, although this isn’t the default way in 10.5 and above. Instead, you are meant to use the Application Layer Firewall (we’ll call it ALF for short), which is what you configure from the Security System Preference pane. You can enable the firewall simply enough by using the defaults command to…

  • Mac OS X,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  Xsan

    Uniq Logs

    Recently I’ve been looking at a lot of log files. And sorting through them can be a bit of a pain. However, there are some tools out there to help make this process a bit easier. The first of these is sort. If I have a log that has 1,000 lines, while I like to initially see any lines that are repeated numerous times so that I can see when servers are throwing a lot of errors, combing through them can get tedious. Sort will help to reduce the volume and organize them in a manner that makes sense. For example, to sort the logs and remove duplicate line entries…