Archive for category: Articles

System Preferences Profiles in Mavericks (plus a Security Hole!)

System Preferences Profiles in Mavericks (plus a Security Hole!)

Profiles have become one of the most interesting components of the Apple ecosystem – both on OS X and on iOS. With their ability to easily control the functionality of the operating system, install certificates, and manage application preferences, along with their flexibility to use the same profile on desktop […]

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Coping with curl on Mavericks

Coping with curl on Mavericks

Of the UNIX tools shipped with OS X, curl has become one of the most used in recent years, whether as a simple URL fetcher, or a component of much larger projects. It takes any URL as an argument, and reliably fetches it, as well as giving many additional options […]

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Modifying the OS X Mavericks Authorization Database

Versions of OS X prior to Mavericks had a file located at /etc/authorization, which controlled the rights for many different actions, such as adding a printer, changing the time, or setting up Time Machine.  These rights were based on groups, and many admins modified this file so that users who […]

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Enabling Location Services Programmatically

Enabling Location Services Programmatically

Location Services is an important part of OS X, but it is not obvious on how to enable it without going through the System Preferences GUI.  The preference that controls it is not in /Library/Preferences, and due to cfprefsd it is hard to find. Thanks to Tim Sutton for help […]

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Clear text access to ARD’s passwords database!

Clear text access to ARD’s passwords database!

ARD-Inspector is open source donationware which was made for OS X system administrators and consultants who need to recover a computer password from Apple Remote Desktop. To make this tool, it required me to do some reverse engineering of Apple Remote Desktop.  It uses the ARD Master Password to access […]

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iOS 7 App Store License Management

iOS 7 App Store License Management

Apple has now publicly announced some of the new enterprise and education targeted features of iOS 7, and while all of the newly announced features are exciting, the most important one is the addition of App Store license management.  This will solve many headaches that organizations have encountered when having […]

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Changes in Apple Configurator 1.3

Changes in Apple Configurator 1.3

Apple Configurator was updated to version 1.3 on June 18, 2013. With the new update, some new features were added, some old features returned, and some things have changed. UPDATE: back ups are NOT encrypted… Sorry folks! I had erroneously said that back ups were now encrypted. They are not. […]

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SMB2 & You: Saying Goodbye to AFP in OS X Mavericks

SMB2 & You: Saying Goodbye to AFP in OS X Mavericks

One of the biggest announcements from Apple with OS X Mavericks was not part of the WWDC 2013 keynote.  Instead, it is buried deep in a technical document on Apple’s site.  This is the announcement that the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) is being deprecated in favor of Server Message Block […]

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OS X Configuration Profiles review and gotchas: compositing not included?

OS X Configuration Profiles review and gotchas: compositing not included?

One of the issues Mac admins have with OS X’s Configuration Profiles system is that using OS X Server to build a Profile allows only subset of the management “scope” that is provided using MCX / Managed Preferences. Specifically, any configuration profiles made with Profile Manager are the equivalent of […]

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Deployment: A Pedagogical Manifest(o)

Deployment: A Pedagogical Manifest(o)

Last Fall, a discussion arose on the MacEnterprise list about deployment terminology, with the term “thin imaging” coming in as the winner for variety of (conflicting) definitions. (You can read the thread from the beginning or jump on when the discussion turns to terminology.) I was starting to prepare my […]

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