Archive for category: Management

A new FileVault 2 escrow app has been released recently and offers a good alternative to Califlower Vest.  The app is called Crypt and it is Graham Gilbert’s baby.  Crypt has both a client and a web app (which is django-based).  Crypt seems like a great solution if you do […]

Adding printers on multiple machines can be tedious if you have to manually setup all the duplexer and paper tray options that the printer supports. Thankfully there is a command line tool called lpadmn which allows you to configure the printer and all its options in one command. You can […]

DeployStudio RC135 was released yesterday.  It fixes some annoying bugs with flow control (packages and scripts installing out of order).  Check out the change log and download it here. Nate WalckNate is a Systems Reliability Engineer at Dropbox, Inc in San Francisco, CA. He runs afp548.com along with Sam Keeley and […]

Rich Trouton posted a script that checks the status of Gatekeeper and returns a value based upon this status.  He has a generic version as well as an Extension Attribute for Casper Suite (which puts the information into the machine’s inventory screen).  Hop over to Der Flounder for details. Nate […]

With 10.8.2 came a useful fdesetup option for use with FileVault 2 encrypted systems.  This new option is called ‘authrestart’ and it allows you to reboot a FV2-enabled machine and skip the preboot login screen.  This provides a mechanism for doing maintenance that requires a reboot. Check out the details on Rich Trouton’s blog. […]

Over time version control has become more popular within the sysadmin realm, with one of the most popular version control systems being git. Graham goes over some of the reasons that it is a good idea to use Git in your everyday work over on his blog.  Once you get […]

Apple released Apple TV Software Update 5.1 yesterday which includes several new enterprise friendly features, including support for 802.1X and the use of a proxy server. Both are configured via configuration profiles. Details are at the links below. HT5437 – Apple TV: How to install a configuration profile HT5438 – […]

If you use Casper Suite or or planning on using it in the future, you will not want to miss the yearly JAMF Nation User Conference.  In past years, they have had some great sessions on how to best leverage Casper Suite in the modern IT environment.  Some of the […]

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 […]