• Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server: changeip no mas?

    In this article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.5/en/c7sa13.html Apple states that you no longer need to use the changeip command with Mac OS X Server: You can change the IP address of a server using the Network pane of System Preferences or the networksetup tool. When a network address change is detected, no matter how the change happened, changeip is invoked. The tool changeip goes through all configuration files and places where the Server’s IP address is stored, and changes the address to conform to the new address. The server’s IP address can be changed without changeip being invoked from the command-line.

  • Mac OS X Server,  Windows XP

    Mac OS X Server: Cached Logon and Windows PDC Clients

    When using Mac OS X Server as a PDC you may find that you need to tell a Windows system to cache login (aka logon) information for longer than the Windows system allows by default. In an Active Directory environment it is fairly straight forward to deploy this type of setting through a GPO; however, the policy settings for an NT4 style PDC environment (aka – via SMB) won’t necessarily allow you to perform this task. To do so you might need to fire up the registry (or script an event in the login script to do so) and edit the following key with a Value (in terms of login…

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

    Kace and Mac OS X

    KBOX supports package distribution and inventory management for Mac OS X.  KBOX is more commonly known though, for providing imaging, software distribution and inventory management for Windows environments.  But the imaging is what’s missing in the offering for Mac OS X.  So if you’re planning a KBOX deployment then consider going ahead and also planning a NetInstall, NetRestore or InstaDMG deployment to go right along with it for your Mac environment.

  • Mac OS X Server,  Microsoft Exchange Server,  Windows Server

    The Danger of RBLs

    So ordb.org has been dead for awhile.  If you had an inactive server that was using ordb.org as your Realtime Black-List server on that box and you bring it back up then you won’t accept email from anyone any more.  Reason being is that every time your server goes to receive an email and does a lookup on an RBL if it cannot reach the RBL then it will receive no email.  Furthermore if your server cannot communicate with the RBL server then you will reject mail.  So while RBLs will save you from massive amounts of spam they can actually be used to attack your server.  For example, the…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server: Software Updates

    One of the first things you’ll want to do to a newly installed system is run a fresh software update on it to make sure it’s got all the latest patches since the media it was installed from was created.  To do so, you can use the softwareupdate command.  To get a list of available updates from the Apple servers (or whichever software update server you may be using): softwareupdate -list To install of the available updates: softwareupdate –all To install specific updates: softwareupdate -i <label>

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server: Group Quota's

    Group Quotas enable limitation of how much data a given group can write to a volume.  The .quota.group file at the root of a given volume can be used to control quota settings.  Note: the .quota.group file is hidden (as can be seen from the leading . in the filename. The edquota command can be used to enable Group Quotas on a per-volume basis.  In this regard it is important to remember that an AFP mount is considered a volume to the client systems.  Each different AFP Share Point is a separate volume to the client system.  

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X: SetFile

    A couple of months ago I wrote about Using SetFile to Make Files Invisible. But today I’m going to discuss using it to change a few other attributes of a file. The options for SetFile include: SetFile -a can change attributes of a file, such as visibility, locked status, etc. SetFile -c can change the creator of the file SetFile -d can change the creation date of the file SetFile -m can change the modification date of the file SetFile -t can change the file type So let’s look at using some of these other options. First let’s take a file called logo.png on my Desktop (~/Desktop) and let’s change…

  • Final Cut Server,  Mac OS X Server

    Final Cut Server: Stops Making Proxies

    If Final Cut Server stops making proxies for you then check the Qmaster app in Activity Monitor. If it’s red then Force Quit it and it should fire back up immediately. If it does so repeatedly then reinstall Qmaster. If you want to script it then it’s qmasterprefs -restart in /usr/sbin. Seems to be happening more than it should…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X: Fun with scutil

    scutil is an app that can be used to get and set the ComputerName of your Mac.  The following command will return with the name of your computer. scutil –get ComputerName Now, if you want to change the name then you would use –set.  So if you wanted to set the name of your computer to kryptedmacbook you would use the following command: scutil –set kryptedmacbook Now, let’s say you’re writing a shell script and you want to put the computer name in a variable (let’s just call it computernm).  You could use the following line: computernm=`scutil –get ComputerName` Happy Scripting!