Based on a few messages I got after the article on building netatalk to host afp on Linux, it looks like building netatalk to host your shares just isn’t enough. I guess people still like Bonjour or something… In that case, let’s make this netatalk thingie announce itself to the world (er, your local network)! Avahi is much simpler than netatalk, given that there’s none of this dhx nonsense preventing us from using aptitude (again, this whole thing is for Debian/Ubuntu and you’re gonna’ need to escalate those privileges): aptitude install avahi-daemon Then we’re gonna’ need to teach it about the whole afpd service we built, which is done in…
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Deploy CrashPlan Pro en Masse
Recently, I looked at leveraging the CrashPlan Pro REST API to extend the functionality of what can be done with CrashPlan Pro. It just so happens that I’m not quite done talking about CrashPlan Pro just yet. Now that you are off to the races with the API, it’s time to look at pushing that client you’ve got out en masse. Our good friends at JAMF software have been kind enough to publish a white paper that is pretty darn awesome to get ya’ started. But let’s look at what, other than setting the server address and registration key, that you can do. There are a few files embedded in…
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Using the CrashPlan Pro REST API
CrashPlan Pro Server is a pretty cool tool with a lot of great features that can be used to back up client computers. There are a lot of things that CrashPlan Pro is good at out of the box, but there are also a lot of other things that CrashPlan Pro wasn’t intended for that it could be good at, given a little additional flexibility. The REST API that CrashPlan Pro uses provides a little flexibility and as with most APIs I would expect it to provide even more as time goes on. I often hear people run away screaming when REST comes up, thinking they’re going to have to…
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Change SSH Port
I am getting so sick and tired of seeing brute force attempts against SSH traffic. Let’s just change the port that it listens on and then miraculously watch all those brute force attempts disappear. There are a few different ways to go about this in Mac OS X. The first is to just change the port entries in /etc/services (mileage may vary). To do so open /etc/services in your favorite text editor and look for the lines that begin with ssh. These should look something like the following: # Jon Postel ssh 22/udp # SSH Remote Login Protocol ssh 22/tcp # SSH Remote Login Protocol # Tatu Ylonen Just change…
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Pushing Wireless Networks Out
If you need to push a wireless network into your image in Mac OS X, you can do so with the networksetup command. Networksetup has a few options that are specifically geared to working with wireless networks. In order to obtain a list of all of the networks that your system has used, you will use the networksetup command along with the -listpreferredwirelessnetworks option. The man page lists that you will follow this command with the hardwareport. The hardwareport is the name of the wireless network adapter, which can be seen in the System Preference pane. By default this is called AirPort, so the default command to see all wireless…
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Defaults & symbolichotkeys in Mac OS X
Front Row is awesome. Hot keys are awesome. Typos are not. While zipping along, typing my fool heart out, I tend to fat finger about enough to drop my words per minute in half at times. Occasionally, my typos will land me in an annoying spot, with some application opening: often that application is Front Row. Which led me to unmapping the hot key. But then of course, since I reimage my machines a lot, I wanted to put that into my image… Hot keys are stored in com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist, in a users ~/Library/Preferences. You could setup a system with the exact key mappings that you wish to have, use managed…
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Optical Sharing
I recently needed to temporarily enable optical disk sharing on a couple of machines at a number of different sites (don’t ask why, long story). There were enough to where I wanted to do it sending a script. But where is this stuff stored? Snapshot says: in com.apple.NetworkBrowser.plist. Which keys? diff says: EnableODiskBrowsing and ODSSupported, both boolean. Resulting command to enable sharing out my DVD drive: defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true Not the kind of thing I wanted to leave running, so to then disable it again: defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool NO defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool NO
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Scrubbing Assets from Podcast Producer
At some point, you may find that you would like to remove all episodes from Podcast Producer that were brought in using a specific workflow, or based on a specific keyword, a string in the title, a date, or the user that created the episodes. All of these attributes are trapped in the db.sqlite3 database for Podcast Producer. This database is stored in the Server directory of your shared library. Within this database there is a table called episodes. Using that table you can locate all episodes that match the given pattern. To query, you will use the sqlite3 command and identify the database path. A very basic incantation of…
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Managing Active Directory from iPhone
AD HelpDesk is a tool that can be used to manage certain aspects of Active Directory user accounts. Using AD HelpDesk, you can configure an iOS based device to connect to Active Directory using an administrative account (or an account that has been delegated administrative access). Using the tool, you can then find a user. Using the user pane, you can unlock accounts, reset their passwords, force the resetting of the password on the next authentication event and optionally send a user their new password via SMS (a really cool little feature, IMO). There are a lot of useful ways to fit this tool into your service desk or network…
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Running TFTP on Mac OS X
TFTP, or Trivial File Transfer Protocol is a protocol that can be used for quickly shuttling files about. While similar to FTP, TFTP has no username and password (in most cases) and should not be running when you do not need it. It’s still in use today for a number of appliances such as routers and switches, to get firmware and occasionally configuration files. There’s a nice little GUI utility that can be used to house a TFTP server on Mac OS X. It’s funny enough, called TFTPServer. You can obtain it at http://ww2.unime.it/flr/tftpserver. Once you have downloaded it, you can open the application and you will be placed into…