Archive for category: Deployment

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 [...]

One of the rising topics of discussion that continually returns to every single Mac Admin conference, gathering, and website is the deployment of iPads.  iPads have become ubiquitous, for users, schools, and businesses now, and suddenly lots of system admins, technology coordinators, directors, and supervisors are being tasked with adopting [...]

This is part one of a series on dealing with the issues software can cause in enterprise environments, and how to combat these issues. One of the most important skills in a Mac Admin’s toolbox is being able to identify and work around issues with vendor software.  Many vendors release [...]

If you have ever wondered about hosting your Casper server in the cloud, check out this post on Justin Rummel’s blog.  He has some notes he made during a recent JSS setup on Amazon EC2 hosting.  This is a very compelling setup if you have a fair amount of machines [...]

The Premise: Nick McSpadden and I were both working on a similar goal this week: getting Macs to connect to Wi-Fi at the loginwindow. By default, adding preferred wireless networks will only connect once a user is logged in, either via the networksetup command or Profiles. By using a modified [...]

The Context My OS X deployment workflow is a very hands-off approach.  As Mike Boylan and I described in our post “How to Lose 100 Pounds in 10 Days,” my process involves crafting an OS X installer package using Greg Neagle’s CreateOSXInstallPkg to incorporate Munki, iCloud prompt / Lion registration suppression, [...]

If you’ve moved away from an OS X-based infrastructure and towards Linux, you may be familiar with NetSUS, which is a linux-based appliance that can be used to NetBoot Macs.  This is a great solution if you are trying to move towards virtualized and/or non-OS X servers.  One problem is [...]

Just when we thought that the installer for Adobe Flash Player could not get worse, version 11.4 is released and revises our expectations yet again. As has been discussed on the Mac Enterprise Mailing list and as researched by Greg Neagle on his blog, 11.4 has some new quirks.  One such [...]

pkgbuild is a tool that showed up in Xcode 3.2 and is now included in default Lion installs.  It allows you to make an Apple Package from the command line with a minimum amount of effort.  One good use for this tool is creating payload-free packages.  These packages typically run [...]

With the release of OS X 10.8 Server came an updated version of Profile Manager.  If you did not dive into Profile Manager on 10.7 Server, then now is the time to get going with some form of MDM.  Having a MDM solution will be necessary going forward.  Whether this [...]