Archive for category: AFP548 Site News

Couch to 50k (CPE’s)

Couch to 50k (CPE’s)

I’m going to ping pong between a few topics here, so to give everyone guideposts, here are the three main topics I’d like to stay with you, dear reader: 1. With 50k people in the MacAdmins Slack, it’s fine if you don’t want to be a Client Platform Engineer, but […]

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Zentral for ~Observability~ ~Governance~ Compliance

Zentral for ~Observability~ ~Governance~ Compliance

You’ve watched my MDOYVR presentation, but instead of being able to draw an owl, you’re concerned about standing up an osquery query distribution stack in production (unfortunately not what we’ll cover in this post, sorry!) and actually doing the job of visualizing the data. ‘Observability’ and ‘governance’ are my favorite […]

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Code Wranglers Speak In Tongues (Generally)

It is commonly said that python tends to be at least the second-best tool to reach for when approaching a task, whereas some of us get by just fine with shell. The lack of a compilation step for scripting languages tends to help us iterate and ship good-enough solutions quickly, […]

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What we talk about when we talk about code wranglin’

Part Two, Git Recommendations Revisited. (Part One is Here) Since we’re talking code, we should come to grips with the ungainly topic of version control itself before going much further, which in 2020 still means git. On this site (~6 years ago! with not the most generous title) we went […]

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Code Wranglin’, A Series

Welcome to a series about wranglin’ cats code. Some of us are inclined to care about titles, and while I’m fine being a MacAdmin, Client Platform ‘Engineer‘ is a more recent term recruiters want to plug into LinkedIn. That engineer part is meant to differentiate us from the apes sysadmins, […]

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Name Goes Here, code bass=”clash”

On the Twitters not too long ago the question was posed: what topic could you give a 20 minute talk about without any prep? macOS Computer Naming is a thing I can’t find a great canonical resource for on the internets, so here’s an attempt to fill that gap, since […]

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Hipster Software Management

Hipster Software Management

Socially, Slack and Twitter are the two poles I gravitate between: Slack for when I’m hoping to be a burden on or distracted by our always-up-to-something community, and Twitter when I’m more in the mood to consume the echo chamber than reverberate sound out in to it. And then there’s […]

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Arbitrary Code via Puppet instead of Jamf (Pro)

Arbitrary Code via Puppet instead of Jamf (Pro)

If you are familiar with Jamf Pro’s (formerly the JSS/Casper Suite’s) model of smart groups and extension attributes (or EA’s), they provide a way to run code that can (among other things) inventory the state of a computer. Every recon run, they run the provided scripts configured server-side, and through […]

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Proactive Mac Security: Santa ?

Proactive Mac Security: Santa ?

For the next stop in our journey, we’ll review that jolly ol’ soul, Santa. It’s a system for either monitoring what apps are launched and blacklisting the ones you decide are bad, or locking down a macOS computer to only run the ones you’ve whitelisted. Despite what The Register seems […]

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Stop All The Downloadin’

Stop All The Downloadin’

Just a quick one, to remind you that there are ways you can have a dialog with users about tightening security controls. We’re beating the drum about Flash dying a death, and haven’t included it in our image since the Great Analytics Fiasco of 20.0.0.235. I’m not the most tolerant […]

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