Quick Tip – Changing ComputerName Before DeployStudio Finalize

If you are in an AD environment and computer names come from somewhere else in your organization, it may be inconvenient when trying to quickly prepare a new machine. DeployStudio has a form workflow step to set some information you’d like customized for the computer, including the local name(for Bonjour) and […]

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Finally with the Docker, Pepijn Bruienne with Charles Edge, Part Two

What you’ve all been waiting for, the exciting conclusion to Charles interviewing Pepijn, where they finally let loose the dogs of Docker. Be sure to not listen all the way until the end, as the hand-egg talk somehow slipped in.

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Sydney Mac Admins April Meetup

If you manage or administer devices with an Apple logo and are in Sydney on the 16th, you should come along to meet your peers. Take part in an informal chat and share what has and hasn’t been working for you and others. Find out what is new, what works […]

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Return of the Intermittent Bricking

Return of the Intermittent Bricking

So it used to be we’d wait for machines that were bound to Active Directory running 10.10.0-10.10.2 to freeze during startup and we’d either perform CPR or apply rc.server script fixes. ‘Things can only get better,’ we said. ‘Just trust them,’ we said. ‘They’ll get it all fixed if we […]

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Autopkg – Download Recipe Decision Making Process

Autopkg – Download Recipe Decision Making Process

It’s been a long-standing goal of mine to help people get started making their own recipes for autopkg, which was recently spurred on by revisiting my previously-discussed recipeGenerationUtils. The autopkg wiki can only be so instructive on the process besides some general guidelines, so I thought I’d expand on some points here, while […]

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Pepijn Bruienne Reverse-Interview by Charles Edge, Part One

Once again donning the yellow jersey, Charles Edge returns to reverse-interview Pepijn Bruienne, recorded back at the turn of the year. We’re so happy to have Charles back with his new role at Bushel, mostly because we can finally drag out the ‘scrum masters’ tag again. Lovingly polished by the awesome Aaron Lippincott, […]

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Thunderstrike Need-To-Know

Thunderstrike Need-To-Know

When we heard about the ‘bootkit’ exploit branded Thunderstrike having the potential to remove all of your security controls it was pretty disturbing. Luckily Apple controls a relatively small number of models, and released a patch for several affected CPU versions, bundling it with 10.10.2 so as to lessen the number […]

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Stop Remediating While you Audit

Stop Remediating While you Audit

Let’s talk about orchestration. This term is different than just applying the normal set of configuration profiles you want near-permanently enforced on the workstations under your management. Too much theory isn’t necessarily helpful, but sometimes I come across something that feels right, and then experience validates it as a real, […]

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Enhancing Sal with Facter and Profiles

In a previous post, I showed how to set up Sal. Sal‘s basic functionality is useful on its own, for the basic Munki reporting – what are the completed installs, pending updates, what OS versions, how many devices checked in the past 24 hours, etc. In this post, I’m going […]

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Using Puppet with WebHelpDesk to Sign Certs, with Docker

In a previous post, I showed how to use Munki with Puppet SSL Client certificates in a Docker image. In that example, the Puppetmaster image is set to automatically sign all certificate requests. Good for testing, but not a good idea for production use. Instead, we should look into Puppet […]

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