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Apple Setup Assistant and First Boot Package Install Generator.app
A while back, I built an Automator application named First Boot Package Install Generator.app. It’s designed to generate installer packages, where the generated packages in turn serve as a delivery...
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PPTP VPNs no longer supported by Apple’s built-in VPN client on macOS Sierra...
Starting in OS X El Capitan and iOS 9, people trying to set up a PPTP VPN connection on their iOS device or on their Mac would get a warning that looked like this: iOS: OS X: The reason for these...
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Showing and hiding all desktop icons via the command line
As part of preparing for a presentation, it’s often handy to be able to hide the icons on your desktop so that folks viewing the presentation aren’t distracted by what you have stored on your desktop....
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Slides from the “OS X Security – Defense in Depth” Session at X World 2016
For those who wanted a copy of my security talk at X World 2016, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF – http://tinyurl.com/XWorld2016SecurityPDF Keynote –...
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Creating a screen recording of a second display with Apple’s QuickTime Player
One of the features of Apple’s QuickTime is that it allows a video recording to be made of your screen. This allows whatever you’re doing on the screen to be captured in a video and played back later....
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Running Apple’s System 1 on OS X El Capitan
As part of some research which I’m doing on Mac filesystems, I wanted to see if it was possible to get Apple’s System 1 running on OS X El Capitan. The reason that I am specifically interested in...
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Slides from the Documentation session at X World 2016
For those who wanted a copy of my documentation talk at at X World 2016, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF – http://tinyurl.com/XWorld2016DocPDF Keynote –...
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Editing /etc/sudoers to manage sudo rights for users and groups
In some environments, it may be desirable to give users admin rights while restricting those users from being able to run commands with root privileges while using the command line. A way to achieve...
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Exporting Unix man pages to plain text files
While working with different versions of Mac OS X and macOS, it’s often been useful to me to be able to export the contents of a particular command line utility’s Unix man page to a plain text file....
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MacAdmin 101: Building Mac disk images using AutoDMG
As part of the process of deploying Macs, it is occasionally necessary to image or re-image them with a disk image containing the latest version of OS X or macOS. When I need to create disk images for...
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MacAdmin 101: Building a recovery partition installer package using Create...
As part of the process of deploying Macs in my shop, it is occasionally necessary to image or re-image them with a disk image containing the latest version of OS X or macOS. To assist with making sure...
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Session videos now available from X World Conference 2016
The good folks behind X World have now posted the session videos from X World 2016. All are accessible from the X World 2016 YouTube playlist page, which is available via the link below:...
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MacAdmin 101: The root user account
An issue that can pop up for new Mac admins is whether or not to enable the root account on the Macs in your environment. By default, the root account on OS X and macOS is a disabled account with the...
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Automating Oracle Java 8 JDK updates
To go along with a previous post about automating Oracle Java 8 updates, I’ve now posted a script to download and install the latest Java 8 Java Development Kit (JDK) from Oracle. Oracle has been...
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Apple-installed applications not responding to keyboard or mouse input
One of my customers reported an unusual problem today with their keyboard, mouse and trackpad. When they tried to to use Apple’s Mail or Messages applications on OS X El Capitan, both Mail and Messages...
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Setting up Casper smart groups to include specified operating system and later
As part of setting up Casper policies, you need to set which Macs will be receiving these policies by setting the scope. The scope defines which Macs or users will be receiving these policies. When...
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New Operating System Version smart group operators available in Casper 9.93
As a follow up to yesterday’s post about setting up smart groups which automatically include a specified operating system and later, my colleague Erik Gomez sent me a heads-up about a new feature in...
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Generating multiple-use Casper QuickAdd installer packages using the JSS
As part of the process of upgrading my Casper server, I generally create a new installer for the Casper agent in the form of a QuickAdd installer package. This process usually looks like this: 1....
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Disabling Bonjour advertisement on OS X El Capitan and later
As part of a discussion of security issues with some colleagues this morning, the question of how to disable Bonjour advertisement came up on OS X El Capitan and later came up. Bonjour advertisement is...
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MacAdmin 101: Creating local user accounts with CreateUserPkg
As part of the process of deploying Macs, Mac admins may want to add one or more local user accounts with a pre-determined password. The reasons for this may include the following: Setting up a local...
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