You can quickly and easily back up your Filewave databases using the fwcontrol command to stop a Filewave server (thus preserving the integrity of the data you are backing up) and then backing up the database using the /fwxserver directory. To get started, we’ll first down the server. This is done using the fwcontrol command along with the server option and the stop verb, as follows: sudo fwcontrol server stop Now that there won’t be data trying to commit into the database, let’s make a backup of the database directory using the cp command: cp -rp /fwxserver/DB ~/Desktop/Databasebak To start the database, use the decontrol command with the server option…
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View The Content Of Files Without Comments In Bash
So I comment a lot of lines out in my /etc/hosts file. This usually means that I end up with a lot of cruft at the top of my file. And while I write comments into files and scripts here and there, I don’t always want to see them. So I can grep them out by piping the output of the file to grep as follows: cat /etc/hosts | grep -v "^#" You could also do the same, eliminating all lines that start with a “v” instead: cat !$ | grep -v "^v"
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App Translocation Services In OS X 10.12
The “What’s New in macOS” page for Sierra (10.12) lays out a little known change that a colleague at Jamf was working on the other day (hat tip to Brock): Starting in macOS 10.12, you can no longer provide external code or data alongside your code-signed app in a zip archive or unsigned disk image. An app distributed outside the Mac App Store runs from a randomized path when it is launched and so cannot access such external resources. To provide secure execution, code sign your disk image itself using the codesign tool, or distribute your app through the Mac App Store. For more information, see the updated revision to…
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Programatically Manage Fingerprints in OS X
Apple recently introduced a laptop with the same fingerprint technology found in an iPhone as well as a T-1 chip to take the sapphire Touch ID sensor information and store it securely, non-reversibly(ish), on the machine. OS X 10.12 now comes with a tool that can manage the fingerprints, stored as keys, on the device. The bioutil command is simple to use, with a few options that are mostly useful for enabling different features of the new technology. Let’s get started by enabling the unlock option, using the -r option to see if Touch ID is enabled for the current user and -s to check the system as well: bioutil…
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Remove All User Keychains Except One in macOS
macOS has keychains. Sometimes they’re a thing. When they are you might want to delete them. Let’s say you have an admin account. You want to keep the keychains for that account, but remove all the others. For this, you could do a shell operator to extglob. Or you could do a quick while loop as follows: ls /Users | grep -v "admin" | while read USERNAME do; rm -Rf "/Users/$USERNAME/Library/Keychains/*" done; If you borrow this, be careful.
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Update Ruby to Install Rails on macOS 5.3 Server
I thought there might be an easier way to do this. So there’s this binary called serverrails that I assumed would install rails – no wait, actually it’s a ruby script that tells me to ‘gem install rails’ – which fails: cat `which serverrails` #!/usr/bin/ruby # Stub rails command to load rails from Gems or print an error if not installed. require 'rubygems' version = ">= 0" if ARGV.first =~ /^_(.*)_$/ and Gem::Version.correct? $1 then version = $1 ARGV.shift end begin gem 'railties', version or raise rescue Exception puts 'Rails is not currently installed on this system. To get the latest version, simply type:' puts puts ' $ sudo gem…
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Clear Expired Shells In macOS
Recently, I got a strange message when trying to run a command: You have exceeded the maximum number of shell sessions. I’d seen a series of commands but never really needed to use them, so I ran: shell_session_delete_expired And viola, life was good. My command run. Of course, the next time I went to close the terminal correctly using the exit command. Upon doing so, I noticed: logout Saving session… …copying shared history… …saving history…truncating history files… …completed. [Process completed] So, I opened a new shell and ran: shell_session_update And go the same result. Same with: shell_session_save Fun.
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Quick and Dirty OS Installations with startosinstall
Automating OS installations is going to eventually be about as easy on macOS as it is in iOS (er, if you have MDM that is). But in the meantime, it’s getting a bit more challenging. The obvious way Apple would prefer this to happen these days is via the startosinstall command that first shipped with El Capitan and with brtool getting moved around all the time, and becoming less of a thing, there’s one quick and easy thing you can do: sudo "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app" --agreetolicense --nointeraction --volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD In the above command, we’ve dropped “Install macOS Sierra.app” on a machine. While you’d guess that…
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Use The Software Update Service In macOS Server 5.2
The software patching configuration built into most operating systems is configured so that all a user has to do is open a box at home, join the network and start using the computer right away. As environments grow from homes to small offices and then small offices grow into enterprises, at some point software updates and patches need to be managed centrally. OS X Server 5.2 (on Sierra), as with its macOS Server predecessors has a Software Update service. The service in the Server app is known as Software Update and from the command line is known as swupdate. The Software Update service, by default, stores each update in the /var/db/swupd…
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Configure Xcode Server On macOS Server 5.2
Apple developers in growing development teams invariably need a continuous integration system. This automates the build, analysis, and testing solution for software development using Xcode. macOS Server has an Xcode service, capable of integrating your developer account with git, providing many of the options required to build a continuous integration system. Before you configure the Xcode service that can take committed code and then test and build your software, you’ll need an Apple developer account. The Xcode service then links git to a developer account and runs automations, referred to as bots, in Xcode. Therefore, you’ll also need to have Xcode installed on the computer running the Xcode service. Bots are then managed and reported on using a…