Archive for category: Third Party Applications

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 […]

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™ […]

A new release of my monitoring plugin for Nagios (and compatible) monitoring solutions is available. This version includes some added hardware monitoring for HDD, Memory & CPU Usage. There are many bug fixes which clean up a lot of the (null) and 404 errors that were occurring when run from a OSX monitoring server.

 You can down load it from https://code.google.com/p/libsrvrmgrd-osx/downloads/list

To get usage instructions just run the plugin from within a terminal with no arguments. Please get stuck in and log bugs/feature requests! 🙂

 Félim

I have been designing and perfecting a new piece of free deployment software for Mac OS X. The program is called StarDeploy, it is easy to setup and use.  All one needs is a network share and the client installed on a Mac. It can install packages or items that are not packaged. Software can be deployed on or off site because it uses AFP, FTP, SMB, WebDav shares.  There are some fun features like Growl and MCX support. Feel free it to give a try at www.stardeploy.com It is free to use. 

Folks,

Ok, so I've been quiet for a while, but here's a version of Policy Banner for Snow Leopard. 

<http://ps-enable.com/software/PolicyBannerPreLoginApp.dmg/view>

Open source, MIT-licensed, go have fun with it. 🙂

–Paul

I usually get quite a lot of unsolicited feedback about Adobe's installers at MacWorld or WWDC (and even better, unguarded, feedback at the Thirsty Bear around closing time) but this year without an IT Track at WWDC (grrrr) I stayed home. Since I am not down there this year I wanted to know if anyone has had a chance to try out the new Creative Suite Enterprise deployment tool? It's now named the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition and allows you to make a pkg for ARD and allows you to disable the EULA, product registration reminders, the Adobe Updater, etc. I can pass your feedback directly along to the product team. Anyone who attended the MacWorld 2010 Adobe CS Deployment and Provisioning talk/Q&A knows that they are aware of our pain as IT techs and I believe are moving in the right direction with this tool. 

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html

Jody Rodgers

Desktop Engineering, IT

Adobe Systems 

GroupLogic is working to bridge the gap between corporate mass archival solutions and Mac OS X. With a new product called ArchiveConnect, the makers of Extreme Z-IP now have a product that provides the ability to fully integrate CommVault's Simpana. This allows you to reduce the required footprint of on-line disk capacity while being able to meet compliance and data retention requirements. Check out their webinar at: http://www.commvault.com/webinars/details.asp?id=1083 

I've borrowed from Peter Bukowinski's script that will lookup when an AD user's password is due to expire, and expanded upon it to run as a task in the OS X menu bar. The applet includes preference settings for the following: 

1. Adjust how often you are required to change your password (5 – 365 days).
2. Automatically launch the applet at logon. 
3. Display the date your password will expire on the logon window (requires admin permissions).  

This applet is open source and hosted on Google Code: Password Monitor.

If you've ever tried using the command line to change the defult NetBoot image on your OS X Server, you know that it can be a pain in the butt and have probably resigned yourself to just using the GUI — even though it takes seven clicks (from initial launch of Server Admin) to do it.

Because of the numerous times I've wanted to change the default NetBoot image while away from my admin tools — not to mention my increasing distaste for those seven clicks — I came up with a script that makes switching the default NetBoot image from the command line dead simple.

You can read more about it here (including how to install and use it) or download it directly here.

Ed. Note: Perhaps a word of warning? Discuss. 

Firefox 3 appears to have issues with user accounts not located on the main drive.  At the very least it cannot deal with a network user account being located on a remote OS X Server.

When I updated to Firefox 3, I immediately noticed that Bookmarks were not visible under bookmarks menu.  The Search engine field had a generic icon and when I selected 'Manage Search Engines', the dialog box was frozen and I couldn't get out of it without quitting Firefox.  When I tried to enter a URL into the URL field and press 'enter', nothing happens.  However, when double-click on a URL in an e-mail message, that appears to work.

I initially ran Firefox 3 on a client Mac OS X 10.5.3.  My home directory (and thus my Firefox profile) is on an XServe running OS X 10.5.3 Server.

When I switched to a local admin account (i.e., Firefox profile on the local hard drive), it seems to work fine.  However, when I switch back to my network home account (on our XServe), it still displays the problems described above.  I tried other user accounts on our XServe with the same problems.

Downgrading to Firefox2 solved the problems with no apparent permanent damage to the Firefox user profile.

As is, Firefox3 is completely unusable for my set up.  I'll stay with Firefox2 until this is resolved.