Archive for category: OS X

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. […]

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 […]

Various Mac Admins have noticed that if you install Flash Player 11.3 using the .pkg file that can be found inside the .app which Adobe provides, System Preferences will crash if you try to use Check Now in the Flash Player PreferencePane.  This does not occur if you install Flash […]

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 […]

Filewave has released a new image creation tool called ‘Filewave Lightning.’   This GUI-based tool is specifically for generating 10.7 and 10.8 images along with baking in additional packages if desired.  According to Filewave’s website: “FileWave Lightning is the ultimate image creation and deployment tool using the new, ultra-fast, Thunderbolt™ […]

With the released of Casper Suite 8.6, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is now fully supported.  For OTA enrollments to go smoothly on OS X 10.8, the QuickAdd package must be digitally signed with a valid Apple Developer Certificate.  Without this, Gatekeeper will warn the end user that the package […]

With the release of Mountain Lion I needed a way of creating an updated Recovery HD partition when imaging our machines. In the past I used a combination of solutions by Clay Caviness and Joel Bruner. After discovering that all I needed was the dmtest tool from the Lion Recovery […]

If you didn’t catch this PSA from Greg Neagle earlier this month, it is worth a look.  Mountain Lion now uses a https url to pull updates from Apple rather than simple a http url.  This shouldn’t be a huge deal for most people, but if you were hijacking DNS […]