Archive for category: OS X

If you use ESXi/vSphere, then you may know how handy templates can be for rolling out new services, test boxes and the like.  Apparently you can makes templates for vSphere that have never been booted (zero chance of cruft to mess with your testing).  Check out Mads’ blog for details on […]

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 […]

Apple has posted a document highlighting the core technologies of OS X Mavericks, which includes some changes from Mountain Lion. Among the new features is a change to the default file sharing protocol from AFP to SMB2.  OS X has long supported SMB, but AFP has remained the default.  AFP […]

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 […]

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 […]

Apple has pushed some changes to XProtect.  Rich Trouton has the details over on his blog. Nate WalckNate is a Systems Reliability Engineer at Dropbox, Inc in San Francisco, CA. He runs afp548.com along with Sam Keeley and is one of the founding members of the ##osx-server IRC channel on […]

Working with Open Directory can be a great experience…until it isn’t.  When your database goes up in flames (or perhaps if), it can be frustrating and maddening.  Charles Edge has an article posted on what to do when your OD database decides to spontaneously corrupt itself. Nate WalckNate is a Systems Reliability Engineer at Dropbox, […]

Has anyone else seen this issue?  It has only been reproduced on Thunderbolt-equipped Macs while attached to Cinema Displays (Either Mini-Display Port or Thunderbolt).  If you are able to test this on both Thunderbolt and Non-Thunderbolt Macs as well as Cinema and Third party displays, please leave the results of […]

After some undocumented options were found in the asr tool, Greg Neagle started digging around some other commands to see if he could find any other hidden options. The result of this interest has lead to some methods for finding hidden options in any command, although his specific example involves softwareupdate. […]

Installing printers via lpadmin on OS X can be a pain, especially if you do not know the names of the specific options you need for the printer (Duplex, Finisher, etc).  You can dig through the .ppd if you’d like, but this is not as helpful as you might hope. […]