Much has been made about the demise of FTP on OS X Server. Well, while it may be badly burned, it’s not dead yet. Let’s look at enabling FTP first on the server and then per share. Enable FTP on the Server The first thing to do on a server that you want to expose through FTP is enable tnftpd. To do so, open Workgroup Manager or Server and create a group that has user who you want to provide FTP services to. In this example we are going to assume a dedicated FTP server and open access to everyone, but feel free to swap out your group name for…
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Man Pages Made Easy
Ever since upgrading to Lion I’ve been making a few slight changes in workflow. One such change, which I’m still on the fence about, is to switch from reading man pages in a tiled Terminal screen, to reading them in a browser window. It seems like a small thing, but I spend a lot of time switching between terminal screens or using screen to switch between sessions. Bwana allows you to read a man page from within a browser. Simply load download the Bwana app into your /Applications directory and wait a few seconds. Then open a browser window and look for a man page. For example: man:dsconfigad Now, you…
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Lion's Versions Feature
In Mac OS X Lion, applications can make use of a feature to auto-save and version files. This feature locks files that are inactive for editing and when the file is unlocked then starts automatically saving versions. If you have a problem with the file you can then always step back to a previous version of the file. The feature is manifested in the title bar and the file menu of applications that make use of it. When you open a file, it can be locked. Viewing the file in the Finder also shows that it is locked. Clicking on locked provides the option to unlock. Once unlocked you can…
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Paths in Title Bars
When I install a new system that I am personally going to be using, one of the few tweaks I make is to configure the Finder to show me paths in the title bar. This just keeps me from the occasional Command-click on the folder name and keeps me abreast of where I am. Mostly it’s helpful in list or icon view as. To enable full paths use defaults to write an _FXShowPosixPathInTitle key into com.apple.finder.plist. The key should be boolean and we’re setting it to true. After about 30 seconds new windows should show with the path in the title bar: defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES I actually…
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Scripting Video Changes in Lion: avconvert, pcastaction & podcast
The avconvert command is a new addition in OS X Lion that allows administrators to quickly and easily convert video from one format to another using presets for video conversion. The presets are mostly common Apple formats tuned to specific devices. In its simplest form, avconvert uses a preset, a source and then an output to convert the source to the output using the preset to define the format to use for conversion. A useful preset is the 640×480 one. To convert this using this idea: /usr/bin/avconvert --preset Preset640x480 --source /Convert/test.mov --output Converted/test.mov While some of the presets are pretty self explanatory, I haven’t gone through them all to see…
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Directory Services Scripting Changes in Lion
opendirectoryd Scripting directory services events is one of the most common ways that the OS X community automates post-imaging tasks. As such, there are about as many flavors of directory services scripts are there engineers that know both directory services and have a little scripting experience. In OS X Lion, many aspects of directory services change and bring with them new techniques for automation. The biggest change is the move from DirectoryService to opendirectoryd. In Snow Leopard and below, when you performed certain tasks, you restarted the directory services daemon, DirectoryService. The same is true in Lion, except that instead of doing a killall on DirectoryService, you do it on…
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The OS X Application Layer Firewall Part 3: Lion
In a couple of previous articles I looked at automating the Application Layer Firewall in OS X. These are pretty common articles that get back-linked to the site, so I decided to update them earlier, rather than later, in the Lion release. The tools to automate firewall events from the command line are still stored in /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall. And you will still use socketfilterfw there for much of the heavy lifting. However, now there are much more helpful and functional options in socketfilterfw that will allow you to more easily script the firewall. Some tricks I’ve picked up with alf scripting: Configure the firewall fully before turning it on (especially if…
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RAMdisk on MacBook Air
I can’t remember where I picked up how to get a RAM Disk mounted in OS X, but it’s a great way to get some unbelievable speeds on your Mac for those minor IO intensive processes that don’t need persistent data. It should be mentioned that the contents of RAM disks are erased, once ejected, but the speed of processes while they’re running can be pretty phenomenal on systems with fast RAM. The best example is a MacBook Air, where the memory is surface-mounted QFP and so really fast. Let’s say you have 4GB of memory and you want to run a process that isn’t going to take more than a…
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NTP, OS X, Windows, Cisco and You
At this point, most Mac admins know to how to enable ntp on a Mac OS X Server and set clients to the server. Most Mac admins also know how to use managed preferences to set ntp as well. We all know that time is pretty important and most are using ntp at this point. Network time should, almost by definition, be continuous, which allows ntpd in Mac OS X can update clocks in small denominations. Thus, managing corrections with little overhead or impact to the system enables ntp to be an inexpensive method for managing clocks. But ntp is also built to keep things running smoothly even when there…