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

    Using the Software Update Service on Mountain Lion Server

    The software patching configuration built into most operating systems is configured to open a box at home, join your network and start using the computer right away. As environments grow from homes to offices and then offices grow into enterprises, at some point software updates and patches need to be managed centrally. Mountain Lion, as with its OS X 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 directory. The Software Update servie is actually comprised of three components. The first is an…

  • Football,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Time Machine

    2012 Penn State MacAdmins Conference

    Don’t let the theft of the Paternoville sign fool ya’, State College is as safe as ever. That is, until a bunch of Mac guys descend on the Nittany Lion Shrine. Yes, it’s that time of the year again when Mac guys from around the world (and yes, all of the speakers are male) descend upon Pennsylvania State University from throughout the Big 10 and beyond to discuss the Penn State mascot, the Nittany Lion. Actually, it’s a mountain lion, so we can’t discuss it quite yet at that point, but we can talk about a slightly bigger cat: Lion. Lion deployment, scripted tools, Munki, InstaDMG, Puppet, migrations, “postPC,” PSU…