Articles by: Derick Okihara

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by Apple and may not work, but it worked for me. Something that came up many, many times in the 2 years of our iPad deployment was “I’ve forgotten my passcode”. More often than not, the iPad was offline because it was inactive for […]

Here’s one that will make educators and education network administrators realllllly happy. There’s a hidden gem in the AppleTV 6.1 update that was released today. In addition to Bonjour over UDP negotiation for AirPlay, iOS 7.1 devices will also look for AirPlay sources using Bonjour over bluetooth when doing its […]

On February 26, 2014 Apple announced its new Device Enrollment Program (DEP). You can read about the features of the DEP here. In a nutshell, for US customers who have purchased devices directly from Apple, you can: 1) Force enrollment with your MDM when device is set up (every time) […]

For many reasons, you may find yourself needing to start a new Mavericks Open Directory server from scratch. In this article, I’ll go over how to import your existing users from an older Open Directory server and import them to your new Mavericks server. I will also use a tool […]

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. […]

Serving Diskless Netboot for your Macs without OS X Server
 
With the official death of the Xserve, some of you may be looking at your future plans for services you currently provide. If you plan to migrate away from OS X server for some functions, NetBoot can be one of them.  Read on to find out how…

Ed. Note: This walks you through how to set up a NetBoot image without needing a local drive mounted on the client system. There is a distinction between this and what the Apple materials refer to as diskless NetBoot which is when you would use an AFP share to hold all of the read/write bits you need. Mac OS X Server can do both this method of using the RAM disk, typically used for NetInstall setups, and the later where you would use for an actual "live" system such as for a lab of machines actually in use by users instead of just for imaging purposes. For most admins just wishing to do deployments, using a RAM disk is all you'll most likely need.

Migrating 10.5 iCal Server to 10.6 with group calendars

In Mac OS X 10.5 Server, user and group calendars were available in iCal server.  User calendars worked pretty well, but group calendars were a bit of a kludge.  The biggest mess was the web calendar.  I’m glad to say a lot of this has been vastly improved in 10.6 server. Read on to find out about my migration journey and the numerous bumps in the road.