• public speaking

    MacTech Conference 2012 In Retrospect

    I love going to conferences. MacTech Conference this year is a great example of why. The conference organizers and staff did a superb job, the attendees were top notch and the weather was just right. But it was the same last year in all three regards. What I felt really made MacTech special this year was the Disney pixie dust magic coming together with all of that. And I was only there for a day, regrettably… The talent level at these events continues to be top notch. As Jeff, Nigel, Peter, Gary, now Zack and others have moved on to other platforms and other roles I have continually wondered whether…

  • public speaking

    My MacSysAdmin Presentations For Today

    The first presentation I’ll be doing at MacSysAdmin today is on Windows Server in Mac OS X and iOS environments, which can be found here: MacSysAdmin_Windows The second presentation I’ll be doing today at MacSysAdmin is on iOS deployment, which can be found here: MacSysAdmin_iOS If you’re not able to attend then I hope you will enjoy. I’ll try and get them to Tycho for uploading to the official site asap.

  • Mac OS X

    Signing Installation Packages

    In OS X, installers are known as packages. The trend in OS X is to sign anything going onto a computer so that it can then be installed without concern that the product is not authentic. The productsign command provides the ability to sign packages in much the same way that the codesign command can be used on apps. For example, let’s say that we wanted to sign a package called Alpha.pkg in /tmp with Apple DeveloperID 31415926535897932384626 and have it result in a new package, Omega.pkg in the same directory. The command would be as follows: productsign --sign 'Developer ID Installer: 31415926535897932384626' '/temp/Alpha.pkg' '/temp/Omega.pkg' You can also timestamp the…

  • Mac OS X

    Disable Dock Autohide

    One of those annoying little things is when you ARD into a system and the Dock is nowhere to be seen. Why do we (or should I say they) autohide Docks on servers? Either way, when I ARD into a box and I don’t see a Dock I have this line saved as a Template: defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false; killall Dock By writing an autohide key that is false into com.apple.dock for the currently logged in user, I don’t have to deal with the Dock disappearing any more. You need to kill the Dock and let it respawn, thus the killall as well. Once I’m done working with…

  • Mac OS X

    A Sneak Peak At Mac OS X 10.9

    Yes, it’s about a month or two into the OS cycle and there’s now a 10.8.1. So it’s time to announce the name and image that will be used with the next OS. We’re down to Ocelot, Serval and Bobcat. Therefore, I would think that 10.9 will be… Drumroll… BOBCAT! And from some Chinese factories I’ve been smuggled pictures of what the box that contains the disks will look like. It’s a little retro (disks are now retro btw). And I mean, Police Academy 2 era retro. But think of the startup sounds the OS could make. Think of how much people would want that face beaming back at them…

  • Mac OS X

    Determining .app Executables From a Script

    I’ve mentioned the codesign tool in previous articles, but today let’s look at a specific use. I recently needed to generate a report of the executable for around 2000 app bundles. Luckily, codesign displays the executable for an app when run with the –display option: codesign --display /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app The output looks as follows: Executable=/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal Another tool that I haven’t written much about is productsign (also in /usr/sbin of Mac OS X 10.8). I’ll look at that one next, as a means of signing packages.

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

    Enable Push Notifications In OS X Mountain Lion Server

    Push Notifications can be used in most every service OS X Mountain Lion Server can run. Any service that requires Push Notifications will provide the ability to setup APNS during the configuration of the service. But at this point, I usually just set up Push Notifications when I setup a new server. To enable Push Notifications for services, you’ll first need to have a valid AppleID. Once you have an AppleID, open the Server app and then click on the name of the server. At the Overview screen, click on Settings. At the Settings screen for your server, click on the check-box for “Enable Apple push notifications.” At the Apple…

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

    Configuring Time In OS X Mountain Lion & OS X Mountain Lion Server

    Time is a very important aspect of OS X Server, as it has been since the early days. Time is so important that if you see network time server, NTP or 5 minutes as the answer on an Apple exam, you should just pick that one, as it’s invariably correct. The traditional way to configure time zones and Network Time Servers is to use systemsetup command. Before you set a time zone, run the following to see a list of all available time zones, use the -listtimezones option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -listtimezones To set the time zone, pick one and use the -settimezone option in systemsetup: sudo systemsetup -settimezone…

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

    Setting Up an Open Directory Master in OS X Mountain Lion Server

    Open Directory has never been so easy to setup for a basic environment as it is in OS X Mountain Lion Server. 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 Mountain Lion Server, but with Open Directory, it’s just too…