Archive for category: Tips

The next MacEnterprise.org webcast, LANrev, will take place on Tuesday, April 17th 2007 at 10:00am PDT.

In this webcast, join Peter Frankl and Bao Tran from LANrev.  LANrev enables enterprises to manage their heterogeneous clients throughout the systems lifecycle.  Unlike other tools, both the LANrev server and administrator console can run on a Mac OS X or Windows server.  LANrev's role-based administration, asset management, Mac OS X imaging, software distribution, license tracking & monitoring, patch management and remote configuration are designed to scale from small organizations to the largest, most complex, corporate, educational and government enterprises.  This webcast will provide a company overview and live demonstration of LANrev.

The MacEnterprise.org group will be presenting a Webcast on Group Logic ExtremeZ-IP Tuesday March 20th at 1:00pm EDT.

In this webcast, Derick Naef and Geordie Korper of Group Logic will discuss the common challenges IT managers face when integrating Macs with Windows file servers, and how ExtremeZ-IP is being used to address those challenges.  The webcast will also discuss Active Directory integration, clustering, performance monitoring, and the new scalability and performance enhancements in ExtremeZ-IP 5.0.

The webcast ID needed to view the March 20th 2007 webcast is "MacEnterprise"
The passcode for the March 20th 2007 webcast is "223636"

For more information on how to view the webcasts, please visit:
http://macenterprise.org/content/blogcategory/113/96/

Go to the following web page 5-10 minutes prior to the webcast start time:
http://webcast.training.apple.com/

Update: MacFUSE are now doing their own installers, and you should definitely all be using those instead of these.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list

I’ve repackaged MacFUSE as an Apple installer package suitable for deployment.

MacFUSE-0.1.0b004-3.pkg.dmg

This package automatically loads the kernel extension for you if the installation volume is the same as the current boot volume.

References:

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

For those of you unclear on Fuse, it allows you to turn logical data collections into filesystems among other file system functions.. For example you can use this to create an ssh filesystem or perhaps exposing Directory Services as a file system, in addition to other “normal” file system functions like NTFS read/write.

Many of you are aware that you can open Directory Access, click on the Server menu item, click Connect, and fill in the address, username, and password of an OS X Server and then make changes to the server’s authentication settings as if you are at the console.

I needed to remote control Directory Access the other day on a plain OS X box that I was using for some server functions, but unlike a full OS X Server, Remote Directory Access would not work.

Read on for how to potentially solve this…

Ever had to change the IP on a server that's without any local supervision, behind who knows how many firewalls, in another country, with only SSH accesss sticking out of it? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a function similar to the Displays preference pane, in which, if the settings turn out to be incorrect, it automatically reverts to the previous working setup? Well, here's one.

Before any critical conf change, I just re-define the current config into an at command:

$ sudo at now + 15 minute
$ changeip - newip oldip newhost oldhost
$ networksetup -setmanual networkport oldip oldnetmask oldrouter
$ Ctrl -D

Then, make your changes. If all does work out, don't forget to disable the safety harness:

$ sudo at -l
$ sudo at -r jobnumber

I used an IP change as an example here, but I'm sure you can think of other scenarios with potentially tragic consequences.

The next macenterprise.org webcast, Apple’s new Intel Xserve, will take place on Thursday, November 30th 2006. Join Alex Grossman, Sr. Director Server and Storage Hardware at Apple. He will lead a discussion about the new 64-bit Intel Xeon-based Apple Xserve.

See the Webcasts section http://www.macenterprise.org/webcasts for more information.

Go to the live feed 5-10 minutes prior to the webcast start time.
The webcast id is “Xserve” and the passcode for November 2006 is 114637.

It's often required to know the ID number of a certain process. In many *NIX distributions, this is done using the "pidof" utility which OS X lacks. While we have "killall" which is useful for sending signals to processes by name, what if we just need the ID number? To get it, simply add this line to you ~/.bash_profile file:

pidof () { ps -Ac | egrep -i $@ | awk '{print $1}'; }

Then calling "pidof procname" will give you the PID(s) of the processes whose names contain "procname" (ignoring case). You can also use it to quickly check if a process is running.

A quick tip on how to use launchd.conf to up some of your system limits.

The next MacEnterprise.org webcast, Entourage and Exchange: An overview of cross-platform collaboration with Entourage’s Exchange connectivity, will take place on Tuesday, June 20th 2006. Join Andy Ruff, Program Manager for Entourage of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. He will provide an overview of cross-platform collaboration with Entourage’s Exchange connectivity. A case study will also be given by Jeremy Reichman, Senior Desktop Support Analyst from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

See the Webcasts section <http://www.macenterprise.org/webcasts&gt; for more information.

Go to the following web page 5-10 minutes prior to the webcast start time:
<http://webcast.training.apple.com/&gt; The webcast id is "macenterprise" and the passcode for June 2006 is 837772.

The next MacEnterprise.org webcast, Apple Remote Desktop 3 and Automator: A match made in heaven, will take place on Tuesday, May 16. Join Nader Nafissi, Product Manager for Apple Remote Desktop, Sal Soghoian, Product Manager for Automator and Steve Hayman, Senior Consulting Engineer for an informative discussion on how you can use Apple Remote Desktop 3 and Automator to automate your routine management tasks. Learn how you can create Automator workflows using the over 30 actions included with Apple Remote Desktop 3 as well as how you can create your own actions.

Read on for more…