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Pulling Guest OS information from offline VMWare Fusion VMs
As a related task to my Boot Camp partition detection, I also wanted to see if I could get information on the OS running in VMWare Fusion VMs without the VM actually being up and running. After some...
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Fixing one systems management tool’s agent with another systems management tool
One of the issues you can run across with systems management tools is doing an automated uninstall and reinstall of the agent software. The dilemma is that you can tell the agent to uninstall itself,...
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2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 350,000 times in...
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First look at Crypt
Since the release of Google’s Cauliflower Vest, one of the wishlist items that a number of Mac admins have wanted is to use Cauliflower Vest’s capabilities without needing to use Google App Engine as...
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Using Apple’s Internet Recovery to unlock or decrypt your FileVault...
One of the new features that appeared with Macs that shipped with Lion and Mountain Lion was Apple’s Internet Recovery. If you encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Mac’s Recovery HD...
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Updating server bookmarks in com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
As part of server and storage changes, you may find that you’ve got obsolete bookmarks stored in Connect to Server‘s Favorite Servers: list. This is usually an inconvenience more than anything else,...
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Installing 10.6.8 on a 2011 Mac Mini
A few months back, I saw that I was running out of space on my home theater Mac Mini. This was a 2007 Mac Mini with 2 GBs of RAM running 10.6.8, with a 1 TB drive that held media content and 2 TB...
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Oracle Java 7 plug-in blocked by Safari
It appears Apple has blocked Safari on 10.7 and 10.8 Macs from running Oracle’s Java 7 in the wake of a zero-day exploit for Java: New Year Java Zero-Day Attacks Under Way Update – January 13, 2013:...
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Running remote commands via SSH
On occasion, I need to run a single remote command on a single system, but don’t have a tool handy (like Apple Remote Desktop’s Send Unix function) to do it. If the machine in question has SSH enabled...
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Setting up ESXi 5.1 on a 2011 Mac Mini Server
One thing I’ve wanted to do for a while is virtualizing my home server setup, as well as making it easier to stand up (and take down) test servers as needed. I’ve been doing a lot of work with VMWare...
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Building Mac test environments with VMWare Fusion, NetBoot and DeployStudio
When new software appears, Mac admins need test boxes that match their standard configuration in order to verify that the new software doesn’t adversely affect anything in their environment. In the...
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Updated daily server report scripts for 10.7.x and 10.8.x
I’ve made some updates to the daily server report scripts that I host on my GitHub repo, as I recently tested them on 10.7.x and 10.8.x Server. The existing 10.5.x – 10.6.x script runs fine as-is on...
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Disabling the Sleep command in the Apple menu
After recently participating in a discussion about disabling the Sleep command in the Apple menu, I wanted to document how to do this. This may be most useful for Mac terminal services, which was the...
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Updated FileVault 2 status scripts now available – now handles unencrypted...
I’ve updated the FileVault 2 status check scripts so that they’re now able to correctly handle unencrypted Fusion drives. The scripts should now report accurately on 10.8.x Macs that use Fusion drives,...
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Java blocked in Safari on 10.6.x – 10.8.x
As of January 31st, it appears that Apple has blocked both Java 6 and Java 7 Update 11 from running in Safari. To verify this on your own machine: 1. Open Safari on a Mac running 10.6.x or higher. 2....
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Slides from the FileVault 2 Session at MacIT 2013
For those who wanted a copy of my FileVault 2 talk at MacIT 2013, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF: http://tinyurl.com/MacIT2013PDF Keynote slides:...
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Deploying Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12 using the softwareupdate tool
With the latest round of Java browser blockages and updates being released, I wanted a way to deploy Apple’s Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12 to those 10.6.x Macs that needed it. However, I wanted to...
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Open Directory needs multiple processors to run in a VM
As more servers and services move off of physical servers and onto virtual servers, there’s been an issue that Mac admins have run into more than once: “I’m trying to set up Open Directory in this VM,...
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Emulating specific Apple models in VMWare Fusion VMs
Once you have a VM built, you may want to edit it to emulate a specific Mac model. One reason for doing this would be to test model-specific updates from Apple’s Software Update. To set your VM to...
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Filing bugreports with Oracle for Mac OS X’s Java 7
Want to file a bug report about an issue having to do with Java 7 for OS X? It can be tricky to find the right place to submit it, so here’s some guidance for filing it in the right place. Update: I’ve...
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