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Migrating AD mobile accounts to local user accounts
One of the practices that has historically helped Macs fit better into enterprise environments has been to bind Macs to Active Directory (AD) domains and use AD mobile accounts, using either Apple’s...
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Moving on
At the beginning of November, I made the following announcement via Twitter: After six rewarding years at @HHMIJanelia, I'm moving on in January 2017 to join the Mac CoE @SAP team. — Rich Trouton...
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Building a home office
As part of starting my new position, I’m transitioning from a job where I’m going to work at an office to a work-from-home position. This has a number of personal benefits for me, but I also knew that...
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Imaging will be dead (soon-ish)
I don’t normally try to foretell the future but there is one change for Mac admins that I’m pretty sure will happen: The coming of Apple File System (APFS) will mark the end of disk imaging on Macs....
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Using DeployStudio to create full backups of a Mac’s boot drive
On some occasions, it’s useful to be able to make a full backup of a system on an ad-hoc basis. One example would be making a complete backup of a Mac’s boot drive before sending it in to Apple for a...
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Entering additional dialpad numbers after connecting to a call when using...
Now that Skype for Business has been released for macOS, I’ve been using it as a soft phone solution rather than using an actual phone in my office. I ran into an issue with a conference call today...
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Enabling debug logging for Microsoft AutoUpdate
As part of assisting a colleague with a customer today, I needed to figure out how to enable the debug logging for Microsoft AutoUpdate. For Mac admins with a similar need, please see below the jump...
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Slides from the “Storing our digital lives: Mac filesystems from MFS to APFS”...
For those who wanted a copy of my filesystem talk at the MacADUK 2017 conference, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF – http://tinyurl.com/MacADUK2017pdf Keynote –...
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Downloading older OS installers on incompatible hardware using VMs
A lot of Mac admins need to test software in their environment against both the shipping version of macOS and older versions of OS X. However, getting older OS installers from the Mac App Store (MAS)...
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Burning disk images to optical media in macOS Sierra
As part of some work I was doing today, I needed to burn an .iso file to a CD. As I have in the past, I opened Disk Utility and looked for the icon for burning a disc only to discover that this option...
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Using FileVault 2 recovery keys on FileVault 2-encrypted Macs to provide...
It can be difficult to provide consistent access for Mac admins when using a local admin account on FileVault 2-encrypted Macs, due to the way password changes are handled for FileVault 2-enabled...
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Providing access to Apple software updates from Jamf Pro’s Self Service
For shops that want to help their customers stay on top of Apple software updates without forcing those updates to be applied, there is a convenient URL that can be used: macappstore://showUpdatesPage...
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Resizing a virtual machine’s boot drive to use all available space
Every so often, it’s necessary to resize the boot drive of an existing virtual machine. The process of resizing the VM’s boot disk from outside the VM is usually pretty straightforward: 1. Shut down...
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Creating a Jamf Pro Cloud Distribution Point using Amazon Web Services
In a number of environments, Mac admins are transitioning from hosting their Mac-supporting services in on-site datacenters to now hosting them with various cloud service providers. These service...
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Disabling login to the root account by changing the root account’s user shell
While discussing various issues with a colleague, he mentioned that he was seeing the root account enabled on several machines where it should not have been. In general, the root account on macOS is...
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Downloading individual Slack emoji using Safari
Thanks to participating in multiple Slack instances, I’ve been in the position more than once where I’ve wanted specific emoji available in one Slack to also be available in another Slack instance....
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Creating multiline login banners
In a number of Mac environments, there is a need or requirement for a login banner (otherwise known as a lock message). This message appears in the following locations: FileVault 2 pre-boot login...
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Disabling iCloud Desktop and Documents syncing
As part of my pre-release testing of macOS Sierra, I tested iCloud Desktop and Documents syncing and decided I was not going to use it because of the problems I found. However, at that time I could not...
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Third-party installer packages may not be installable by the macOS 10.12.4 OS...
With the release of macOS 10.12.4, it appears that Apple has made a change to the OS installer that blocks the installation of third-party packages which have been added to the OS installer. In my...
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Creating macOS installer disk images for VMware Fusion and ESXi with...
I’ve had a tool available for a while named create_vmware_osx_install_dmg, but it looks like it has reached the end of the road with macOS 10.12.3. The reason for this is because macOS 10.12.4 has...
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