These are some resources from my Security session at PSU MacAdmins 2013: Slides – PSU MacAdmins 2013 Security Web resources: Managing OS X – Payload Free Package template Matt’s Mac Blog – Making use of the /etc/authorization file in Lion / 10.7.x Scripts: https://gist.github.com/keeleysam/1060089beca35ae77bc7 https://gist.github.com/keeleysam/fab1280165ba9c51d017 https://gist.github.com/keeleysam/9de97f29698725675afd

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.

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.

A new Office 2011 update was released as of 5/7/2013.  This update requires only Office 2011 14.1.0, so it can be applied to a wide range of product versions.  More info over on the Microsoft KB article.

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 […]

Charles Edge has an article posted about testing memory on Apple computers from the command line.  If you have wanted to run a quick and easy memtest without booting to diagnostic media, then this is the answer you have been looking for.

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. […]

Let’s face it, OS X makes a great stable client platform but the server components do not scale well. That is probably why most big companies rely on some other component to have the infrastructure and then us, the Mac admins, spend a lot of time on the integration. For […]

JAMF Software just recently released Casper Suite 8.7 along with their new education-aimed tool Casper Focus.  I had a chance to play around with it and test it out the past two days, so you can decide if this is something worth pursuing for yourselves. What does it do? To […]