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

    Viewing Mac App Store Purchases From The Command Line

    As you may have noticed, we’ve been working on building some links between the App Store and patch management tools such as Casper, FileWave and Munki. We’ve been looking at policy-based management of apps as well. In this semi-new world of signing and stores and the such, there’s actually a good bit you can ascertain about an app both inside the app as well as inside metadata OS X keeps about the app. I’ve discussed signing (apps and packages) in the past, but let’s look at using some commands to help us out with some tasks. The first command is to determine some information about apps that are on the…

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

    Managing Mail and Safari RSS Subscriptions from the Command Line

    Safari can subscribe to RSS feeds; so can Mail. Podcast Producer is an RSS or XML feed as are the feeds created by blog and wiki services in Mac OS X Server. And then of course, RSS and ATOM come pre-installed with practically every blogging and wiki tool on the market. Those doing mass deployment and scripting work can make use of automatically connecting users to and caching information found in these RSS feeds. If you have 40,000 students, or even 250 employees, it is easier to send a script to those computers than to open the Mail or Safari client on each and subscribe to an RSS feed. Additionally,…

  • Mac OS X

    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…

  • Mac OS X,  VMware

    VMware Fusion 3 Right Around the Corner

    VMware Fusion is now in pre-order for Fusion 3. What’s new? 64-bit support for Snow Leopard systems Support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Unity works with Aero and Flip 3D to further support Windows 7 New migration tools New command line options Upgraded Virtual Machine Library Built-in Automatic Updater Reduced memory and CPU footprint Additionally, it looks like we’ll be updating the mass deployment guide so if you have any updates or points of information that should be added, let us know!

  • Mac OS X,  VMware

    Mass Deploy Parallels

    Sometimes it’s just that easy. Our good friends at Parallels have developed a special Mass Deploy package, available on their site. When you control-click on it and select Browse Contents you will see a license.txt.  You can paste your license into the license.txt file and then put your virtual machine into the root of the package. Once complete, you can push this package out at will.  Additionally, you can edit the postflight shell script in the Resources directory, throwing your own commands at the tail end of the file, adding more virtual machines, customizing settings, etc.  Good luck.