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WWDC 2017 notes
While I’m not at Apple’s WWDC conference this year, several other folks in the community stepped up to help crowdsource questions and answers for the Mac admin community. Due to wanting to stay on the...
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AutoPkg recipes for Apple Enterprise Connect
To help keep on top of software updates, I’ve been using AutoPkg in combination with AutoPkgr and JSSImporter for a while now to upload new software updates to Jamf Pro. However, I recently ran into a...
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Session videos now available from MacDevOpsYVR 2017
The good folks who host the MacDevOpsYVR conference have begun posting the session videos from MacDevOpsYVR 2017. As the session videos are being posted to YouTube, I’ve linked my Storing our digital...
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VMware Fusion 8.5.8 adds Apple File System (APFS) support
VMware recently released VMware Fusion 8.5.8, which according to the release notes includes the following: Another improvement which is not mentioned in the release notes is that VMware Fusion now...
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Activating EndNote X8 using management profiles
I’ve moved on from a role where I needed to support Clarivate Analytics’s EndNote bibliography software, but I noticed that my colleague Rusty Myers is now deploying it in his environment. As part of...
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Automating the enablement of object versioning on AWS S3 buckets
As part of some work I’ve been doing with Amazon Web Services, I needed to enable object versioning on all S3 buckets in an account. However, I had three issues that I needed to accommodate for: There...
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Filesystem session at Penn State MacAdmins 2017
I’ll be speaking at Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2017, which is taking place in State College, PA from July 11th – 14th, 2017. My session will be an overview of Apple’s past and present filesystems,...
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Enabling least-privilege screensharing using Apple’s Remote Desktop Client...
In a number of Mac-using environments, there is often a need for IT staff to remotely connect to a Mac’s screen using Apple’s Remote Desktop application and work with the person on the other end to...
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Using Brisk to file bug reports with Apple
As part of preparing for macOS High Sierra, I need to file bug reports to report problems that I’m finding with the beta releases. As part of this, I’ve started using a tool named Brisk. It helps...
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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 Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2017 conference, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format. PDF – http://tinyurl.com/psumac2017pdf...
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Generating printer configurations using...
As part of a recent discussion, a colleague posted in the MacAdmins Slack that they needed to deploy printers as part of a DeployStudio workflow. DeployStudio doesn’t natively include this...
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Deploying a pre-configured F5 Big-IP VPN client
As part of a discussion with a colleague, he said that he needed to build an installer for his shop’s F5 Network’s VPN service but wasn’t sure how. I hadn’t built one of these previously either, so I...
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Session videos now available from Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2017
The good folks at Penn State have begun posting the session videos from the Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2017. The sessions slides and currently-available videos are all accessible from the Penn...
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Identifying the Jamf Pro server set in CasperCheck using an Extension Attribute
As part of my Jamf Pro testing process, I will often set up a VM using a production setup workflow then enroll that newly-setup VM into my test Jamf Pro server. However, as part of my production...
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Setting a macOS VM to automatically boot to Recovery HD using VMware Fusion
When testing various security functions, like System Integrity Protection or High Sierra’s new kernel extension functionality, it’s often useful to be able to boot a macOS virtual machine (VM) into the...
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Kernel extensions and macOS High Sierra
As part of the pre-release announcements about macOS High Sierra, Apple released the following KBase article: Prepare your institution for iOS 11, macOS High Sierra, or macOS Server 5.4:...
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Adding password protection to manually installed management profiles
While working with some colleagues, I recently built a management profile that my one colleague requested to be set as non-removable. Normally, this can be accomplished by setting the...
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Building a Jamf Pro smart group containing High Sierra-incompatible Mac models
As part of preparing for macOS Sierra in 2016, I prepared a smart group that listed Macs incompatible with macOS Sierra. Apple stated at WWDC 2017 that any Mac that can run macOS Sierra can also run...
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APFS preparation and macOS High Sierra
As part of the pre-release announcements about macOS High Sierra, Apple released the following KBase article: Prepare for APFS in macOS High Sierra: https://support.apple.com/HT208018 Apple makes a...
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Changing local account passwords may cause new login keychain to be silently...
As part of my testing of macOS High Sierra, I’ve noticed that login behavior has changed for local accounts, in cases where the password of the login keychain is different from the password of the...
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