I’ve long been a supporter of building tools in self service portals such as those provided by JAMF and Munki to provide users who don’t have administrative permissions to perform tasks that wouldn’t typically otherwise be destructive. One such example is a simple repair permissions. An administrator can simply open Disk Utility, select their disk and then click Repair Disk Permissions But if you want to do this as a user who doesn’t have administrative privileges you would need to elevate your privileges before doing so. In a larger environment this would be incredibly annoying for dozens, hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of users to bring their computer…
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Using the xsanadmin Command
There are some commands where you just have to wonder why. Sure, I see what this command does, but why bother? Well, I’m not going to say that xsanadmin is one of those commands, but I’m not going to say that it isn’t. At first glance, you might think that the list, stop, start and other verbs look promising. Like maybe you can actually administer a volume from a much simpler to use command line interface. However, if you want a quick and dirty of what xsanadmin does, look no further than just running the command without any verbs or operators: xsanadmin The result is help information from the serveradmin…
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My MacSysAdmin Presentations For Today
The first presentation I’ll be doing at MacSysAdmin today is on Windows Server in Mac OS X and iOS environments, which can be found here: MacSysAdmin_Windows The second presentation I’ll be doing today at MacSysAdmin is on iOS deployment, which can be found here: MacSysAdmin_iOS If you’re not able to attend then I hope you will enjoy. I’ll try and get them to Tycho for uploading to the official site asap.
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Installing Final Cut Server on Lion & Mountain Lion Server
Thanks to Allan Sanderson for the following submission, which outlines how to install Final Cut Server in Lion and Mountain Lion Server. In Server.app ————- Websites: Check “Enable PHP web applications” Install Java ———— Open /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app You’ll be prompted by Software Update service to install Java, click “Continue”, provide admin credentials when promopted. Install Final Cut Server ———————— Run Final Cut Server installer. Then run Software Update to get ProApplications 2010-02 & Final Cut Server v1.5.2 updates. Check Configuration ——————- 1) Check fcsvr user has been created: dscl /Local/Default -search /Users RecordName fcsvr Output should look something like this: fcsvr RecordName = ( fcsvr ) 2) Check “fcsvr” user’s…
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Signing Installation Packages
In OS X, installers are known as packages. The trend in OS X is to sign anything going onto a computer so that it can then be installed without concern that the product is not authentic. The productsign command provides the ability to sign packages in much the same way that the codesign command can be used on apps. For example, let’s say that we wanted to sign a package called Alpha.pkg in /tmp with Apple DeveloperID 31415926535897932384626 and have it result in a new package, Omega.pkg in the same directory. The command would be as follows: productsign --sign 'Developer ID Installer: 31415926535897932384626' '/temp/Alpha.pkg' '/temp/Omega.pkg' You can also timestamp the…
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A Guide To Using Mountain Lion Server (OS X 10.8)
I’ve been doing a number of postings on how to use various features of the latest version of OS X Server. Given that WordPress is pretty much a reverse chronological listing of articles I’ve written, I thought I’d put together a listing of the pages that I’ve done for OS X Server 10.8 (Mountain Lion Server) in order to offer a more pedagogically aligned way of reading these posts. As such, here is the Table of Contents for these posts: Introduction What Changed 10 Impactful Changes Upgrading from Lion Upgrading from Snow Leopard Managing the Server Configuring Alerts Using Web Modules Enable Push Notifications Configuring Time and Time Services Setting Up…
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A Sneak Peak At Mac OS X 10.9
Yes, it’s about a month or two into the OS cycle and there’s now a 10.8.1. So it’s time to announce the name and image that will be used with the next OS. We’re down to Ocelot, Serval and Bobcat. Therefore, I would think that 10.9 will be… Drumroll… BOBCAT! And from some Chinese factories I’ve been smuggled pictures of what the box that contains the disks will look like. It’s a little retro (disks are now retro btw). And I mean, Police Academy 2 era retro. But think of the startup sounds the OS could make. Think of how much people would want that face beaming back at them…
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Configuring Time In OS X Mountain Lion & OS X Mountain Lion Server
Time is a very important aspect of OS X Server, as it has been since the early days. Time is so important that if you see network time server, NTP or 5 minutes as the answer on an Apple exam, you should just pick that one, as it’s invariably correct. The traditional way to configure time zones and Network Time Servers is to use systemsetup command. Before you set a time zone, run the following to see a list of all available time zones, use the -listtimezones option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -listtimezones To set the time zone, pick one and use the -settimezone option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -settimezone…
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Using Time Machine Server in Mountain Lion Server
The Time Machine service in Mountain Lion Server hasn’t changed much from the service in Lion Server. To enable the Time Machine service, open the Server app, click on Time Machine in the SERVICES sidebar. If the service hasn’t been enabled to date, the ON/OFF switch will be in the OFF position and no “Backup destination” will be shown in the Settings pane. Click on the ON button to see a list of volumes to use as a destination for Time Machine backups. This should be large enough to have space for all of the users that can potentially use the Time Machine service hosted on the server. When you…
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Copy Files Status in Mountain Lion
Of the new features in Mountain Lion, one I have already started to love is the fact that when you’re copying folders, you see a status in the Finder screen that lists the folders. This allows me to do a bunch of Finder level copies and rather than tile out the screens that I’m using to copy, I can just watch them from the parent folder. Sometimes it’s the little things…