Apple began rolling out new features with the new Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) program last year. There are lots of good things to know, here. First, the old way should still work. You’re not loosing the stuff you already invested in such as Configurator with those codes you might have used last year with supervision. However, you will need an MDM solution (Profile Manager, Casper, Absolute, FileWave, etc) to use the new tools. Also, the new token options are for one to one (1:1) environments. This isn’t for multi-tenant environments. You can only use these codes and options for iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 and 10.10. Also, if you install…
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Configure An Open Directory Master In OS X Yosemite Server
Open Directory has never been so easy to setup for a basic environment as it is in OS X Yosemite Server (OS X 10.10, Server app 4). It’s also never been so annoyingly simple to use that to do anything cool requires a bunch of command line foo. No offense to the developers, but this whole idea that the screens that were being continually refined for a decade just need to be thrown out and started fresh seems to have led to a few babies thrown out along with them. Not often as I’m kinda’ digging most of the new config screens in OS X Yosemite Server, but with Open Directory, it’s…
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Make the Menu Bar All Emo In Yosemite
In case your Mac just isn’t emo enough for ya’, Apple’s provided us a cool little new feature in Yosemite called dark mode. No, this won’t cause Hellboy to leap forth from your MacBook Air. Well, maybe he’ll visit your MacBook Pro, but I haven’t tested that so please don’t quote me on that. Instead, you’ll get the nice new dark menu bar: But that’s not all folks! Your dock will also get all dark and gothy! To turn it on, just open the General System Preference pane and check the box for “Use dark menu bar and Dock”. Enjoy! Oh, and if that’s not emo enough for you feel…
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Mac Network Commands Cheat Sheet
After writing up the presentation for MacSysAdmin in Sweden, I decided to go ahead and throw these into a quick cheat sheet for anyone who’d like to have them all in one place. Good luck out there, and stay salty. Get an ip address for en0: ipconfig getifaddr en0 Same thing, but setting and echoing a variable: ip=`ipconfig getifaddr en0` ; echo $ip View the subnet mask of en0: ipconfig getoption en0 subnet_mask View the dns server for en0: ipconfig getoption en0 domain_name_server Get information about how en0 got its dhcp on: ipconfig getpacket en1 View some network info: ifconfig en0 Set en0 to have an ip address of 10.10.10.10…
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(Cross-Post) Video from JSS-autopkg-addon Presentation
JSS-autopkg-addon Presentation from Allister Banks on Vimeo. (Guest post by Allister Banks) On June 26th, I had the pleasure of being invited by @Tecnico1931 to the NYC Metro JAMF user group meeting. A worksheet I created for this event may be found here: url.aru-b.com/jssAutopkg See also Shea Craig’s python-jss, and thanks go out to James Barclay, Sam Johnson, and all the folks mentioned in the video.
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MacIT Presentation
I enjoy going to MacIT so much. Paul Kent ran a great little conference in Monterrey one year and I am so glad that I started going to Macworld around that time. I missed it last year while trying to trim back on the travel and am pretty stoked I got to get there again this year. Special thanks to everyone I saw and was able to hang out with. Considering there isn’t a single person I didn’t want to hang out with, sorry if I didn’t see you or get to spend any time. Thanks to Duncan and Kevin White for making time to do the podcasts (hopefully the…
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One Liner Script To Check If Xsan Is Installed
The following will tell you whether Xsan has been installed on a client system. Here we’re checking if the file exists using the [] for a file (I always quote paths that aren’t variables when doing this type of thing) and and then echoing a response that it does. [ -f "/Library/Preferences/Xsan/uuid" ] && echo "Xsan is installed" If the file exists, we could also perform some other tasks or use an else and make changes, like copying an authorization and fsnameservers file into the directory when installing StorNext clients on OS X. The way I would likely do this, if I were saying if the uuid file doesn’t exist,…
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Install OS X Server
Installing Mavericks Server is about as easy as installing Keynote. First, open the Mac App Store and search for OS X Server. Then, click the button to buy the software, or if you’ve already purchased the software click on the Install button. The Server app downloads to your /Applications directory which you can watch happen by watching the status in LaunchPad. Once the download is finished, click on the Server app in LaunchPad or open the Server app to start the initial configuration wizard. When you first click on the Server app, you will be prompted to setup your server. Click Continue. Agree to the licensing agreement by clicking Agree.…
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Install Your Shiny New VPP Token For Profile Manager
Apple began rolling out new features with the new Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) program this week. There are lots of good things to know, here. First, the old way should still work. You’re not loosing the stuff you already invested in such as Configurator with those codes you might have used last year with supervision. However, you will need an MDM solution (Profile Manager, Casper, Absolute, FileWave, etc) to use the new tools. Also, the new token options are for one to one (1:1) environments. This isn’t for multi-tenant environments. You can only use these codes and options for iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 and above. But this article isn’t…
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Manage Profiles From The Command Line In OS X 10.9
You can export profiles from Apple Configurator or Profile Manager (or some of the 3rd party MDM tools). You can then install profiles by just opening them and installing. Once profiles are installed on a Mac, mdmclient, a binary located in /usr/libexec will process changes such as wiping a system that has been FileVaulted (note you need to FileVault if you want to wipe an OS X Lion client computer). /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and /System/Library/LaunchAgents has a mdmclient daemon and agent respectively that start it up automatically. To script profile deployment, administrators can add and remove configuration profiles using the new /usr/bin/profiles command. To see all profiles, aggregated, use the profiles command…