Every now and then I need to reclaim that space in /var/vm or I need to stop a process from paging to swap files while I’m troubleshooting something else. I in no way endorse disabling swap files (which basically kills using swap files as a part of your overall virtual memory) for extended periods of time. However, it has saved me in the case of stability concerns long enough to get a system patched or something like that. To disable OS X swap files, all you need to do is stop the com.apple.dynamic_pager daemon and restart. Use launchctl to stop: sudo launchctl unload -wF /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist Once restarted, you may need…
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Repair Permissions From The Command Line
I’ve long been a supporter of building tools in self service portals such as those provided by JAMF and Munki to provide users who don’t have administrative permissions to perform tasks that wouldn’t typically otherwise be destructive. One such example is a simple repair permissions. An administrator can simply open Disk Utility, select their disk and then click Repair Disk Permissions But if you want to do this as a user who doesn’t have administrative privileges you would need to elevate your privileges before doing so. In a larger environment this would be incredibly annoying for dozens, hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of users to bring their computer…
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Encrypt Mavericks and Mavericks Server
Encrypting a volume in OS X Mavericks couldn’t be easier. In this article, we will look at three ways to encrypt OS X Mavericks volumes. The reason there are three ways is that booted volumes and non-booted volumes have different methods for enabling encryption. Encrypting Attached Storage For non-boot volumes, just control-click or right-click on them and then click on Encrypt “VOLUMENAME” where the name of the volume is in quotes. When prompted, provide an encryption password for the volume, verify that password and if you so choose, provide a hint. Once the encryption process has begun, the entry previously clicked on says Encrypting “VOLUMENAME” where the name of the…
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Using the xsanadmin Command
There are some commands where you just have to wonder why. Sure, I see what this command does, but why bother? Well, I’m not going to say that xsanadmin is one of those commands, but I’m not going to say that it isn’t. At first glance, you might think that the list, stop, start and other verbs look promising. Like maybe you can actually administer a volume from a much simpler to use command line interface. However, if you want a quick and dirty of what xsanadmin does, look no further than just running the command without any verbs or operators: xsanadmin The result is help information from the serveradmin…
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More Information About DHCP Leases in OS X
You can obtain a pretty decent amount of information about leases your OS X computer gets just by looking in the Network System Preference pane, for each interface. However, you can get a little lot more information, as with most things, from the command line. First, we’re going to take a look at en0 on our host and see what the MAC address is: ifconfig en0 ether Now, we can look in the /var/db/dhcpclient/leases directory to see a list of all of the leases we have running on our system. Based on the MAC address of our computer, we should see a file there that starts with the name of…
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Install Roundcube on OS X Server 10.8 with Server App 2
Installing Roundcube to work manually with OS X Server is a bit of a pain. So definitely wanted to mention that topicdesk, who brought us mailbfr and spamtrainer have now built a Roundcube package installer to take the pain out of doing so. The installer is available at http://topicdesk.com/downloads/roundcube. If you run mail on Mountain Lion Server and haven’t done anything for webmail, check it out! The latest release of our Roundcube webmail installer for OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion with Server 2.x is available for download on this page. See current changelog for a complete list of fixes and additions. Please read our FAQs as well. The Roundcube webmail installer for OS X 10.8.x…
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Show File Extensions
In OS X, we don’t see file extensions by default. However, in a number of environments it’s very useful to have them. To see them in the Finder, send a boolean AppleShowAllExtensions key to the NSGlobalDomain as True, then restart the Finder. defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllExtensions -bool true; killall Finder To change back to not seeing extensions: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllExtensions -bool false; killall Finder
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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.
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Installing Final Cut Server on Lion & Mountain Lion Server
Thanks to Allan Sanderson for the following submission, which outlines how to install Final Cut Server in Lion and Mountain Lion Server. In Server.app ————- Websites: Check “Enable PHP web applications” Install Java ———— Open /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app You’ll be prompted by Software Update service to install Java, click “Continue”, provide admin credentials when promopted. Install Final Cut Server ———————— Run Final Cut Server installer. Then run Software Update to get ProApplications 2010-02 & Final Cut Server v1.5.2 updates. Check Configuration ——————- 1) Check fcsvr user has been created: dscl /Local/Default -search /Users RecordName fcsvr Output should look something like this: fcsvr RecordName = ( fcsvr ) 2) Check “fcsvr” user’s…
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Creating Users In Mountain Lion Server
There are four ways to create users in Mountain Lion Server. The first is using the Server app, the second is using Workgroup Manager, the third is using the Users & Groups System Preference pane and the fourth is using the command line. In this article we will look at creating users in the Server app. To do so, open the Server app and connect to your server. Then click on the Users entry in the ACCOUNTS list. The list of users is displayed, based on the directory domain(s) being browsed. A directory domain is a repository of account data, which can include local users, local network users and users…