I’ve written about customizing the LoginWindow on a Mac a few times now. It’s hard to believe that I wrote https://krypted.com/mac-security/more-loginwindow-customizations-in-mac-os-x/ over ten years ago or https://krypted.com/mac-security/login-logout-hooks/ over 12 years ago. One thing I hadn’t covered is seeing the name of the computer, IP address, and version of the OS by clicking on the clock in the upper right corner of the screen. This behavior is disabled by default and once enabled shows an item for 60 seconds as you scroll through them, which is a pretty nice troubleshooting option here and there. Use the following command to active the additional information, we’ll write the HostName key into the AdminHostInfo…
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Password Hints and Retries in OS X
You can customize the number of times that you enter an incorrect password before you get the password hint in the loginwindow on OS X. To do so, use the defaults command to send a RetriesUntilHint integer key into com.apple.loginwindow.plist stored at /Library/Preferences using the following command: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow RetriesUntilHint -integer 10
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LoginWindow: PolicyBanners and Backgrounds
The Login Window in OS X is the screen you see while you’re typing in a username and password. There are a number of customizations used in some environments to make the system easier for users to use, or to make it more specific to a given user environment. One such is customizing the Login Window’s background, which can be done by replacing this file with one that you would like to use: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LoginUICore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/appleLinen.png You can also configure a message to be shown to users. This message, often referred to as an Acceptable Use Policy, can be used as a policy banner that users must accept in order to log…
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Big Changes in Lion Server
OK, by now I’m sure everyone has heard that OS X Server is a download off the App Store. For a whoppin’ $50 you get the OS that was once called “Open Source Made Easy” until someone at Apple realized that GPLv3 might mean that Open Source doesn’t always mean “free as in beer”. Wait, did I say that out loud? Point is, there are bigger changes here than just moving the server to the App Store. There are also some pretty big changes to the GUI of OS X Server. The first and most obvious is the LoginWindow, which is different in OS X in general. It obviously looks…
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Scripting the Force Log Out
Scripting a log out event seems like the kind of thing that would be pretty simple, and if you use the AppleScript later it does appear simple, unless you want to force the event to occur immediately. Why would we want to do such a thing? Most commonly there are two requests. One is to invoke the script with the screen saver to meet some form of policy that requires a log out after a certain amount of time whether the user has saved their data or not (seems a big mean, but it’s not unheard of). The second is to invoke the script as part of a deployment or…
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Mac OS X: screencapture
You can capture screenshots from the command line using the screencapture command. Basically just typing screencapture followed by the path and name of the file to be created will result in a capture of the entire screen. You can also use -c to capture to the clipboard instead of to a file (or Command-Shift-3 if you’re in the GUI). By default screencapture does not get the mouse. You can add the mouse location and pointer to your screenshot using the -C option in your command. Because you have multiple monitors in many cases you may only want to capture a single monitor. You can specify that using the -m option.…