Posted by acletras on Aug 20, 2011 in
Apple,
Management Part of my post imaging process requires me to manually adjust the custom authentication search policy in Directory Utility. Since all of my users and groups live in Active Directory, we want the machine to look first in AD for a user when they enter their log in credentials by having a custom search policy for authentication where AD is above LDAP. I’ve always wanted a way to either script this out, or use ARD to send a command to do this, instead of manually logging in to each machine after it’s been restored and adjusting this via drag and drop.
When I started using DeployStudio a few years ago, I was hopeful this would find its way in to their AD Bind task. Since I’m still waiting for this to happen, I decided I would beat them to it. Read more…
Tags: Active Directory, AD, ARD, Authentication, Imaging, Search Path, Search Policy, Unix Command
Posted by acletras on Aug 9, 2011 in
Apple 
sudo ditto --rsrc --acl path/to/old/machine/Users/ path/to/new/machine/Users/
That will do it.
The Long Story:
All my Macs are joined to Active Directory. Most are common area machines (labs, kiosks, etc) but a few have one or a handful of regular users of those machines. I needed to upgrade them to new machines, and transfer their accounts to new machines. Normally, this would be done using Migration Assistant, but since they are AD users, without the option to force the home directory on the local disk, they don’t appear in System Preferences\Accounts, so Migration Assistant doesn’t see them, even though they have folders in /Users/ on the local machine. I connected the two machines together with a FireWire cable and booted into Target Disk Mode (hold the T key at startup on the old machine), and ran the above command in the Terminal.
You may be asking, “why not just copy with the Finder, or use the mv command in Terminal?” Doing either of these will result in the OS not recognizing that the user folders are linked to accounts, and it will treat them as regular folders with files, and generic permissions. Using this command makes an exact copy of each /Users/ folder on the old machine, in the same location on the new machine. The two switches will preserve resource forks (not really relevant in Snow Leopard and above, but the old machines were running Tiger), and preserve Access Control Lists (ACLs) so all permissions remain in tact.
Simply reboot the new machine before attempting to log in again, and everything should be as it was on the old machine.
Tags: Active Directory, Command Line, Management, Terminal
Posted by acletras on Jan 5, 2011 in
Apple 
The Mac App Store
On this, the eve of the release of Apple’s desktop version of its wildly popular iOS App Store, I find myself very excited. Not for me, but for the many new Mac users who don’t quite understand how things work.
You see, in my line of work, I encounter many people who have Macs. I don’t call them Mac users, but people who own an Apple computer. Just as I wouldn’t call them Windows users if they didn’t understand how that operating system works, I don’t feel they know enough about how to properly use, manage and maintain a Mac to be given the title. Perhaps the biggest issue I encounter is that they have no clue how to install software. Read more…
Tags: App Store, iOS, Opinion, OS X
Posted by acletras on Jun 22, 2010 in
Apple,
icons 
With the release of Adobe’s CS5 suite of applications, it was time for me to make a new folder icon. Enjoy!
[Download]
Tags: adobe, CS5, icons
Computer Info #1 from the Command Line
UPDATED: Since this writing, I’ve switched from Mike Bombich’s NetRestore, to DeployStudio. DeployStudio offers the ability to populate all 4 computer info fields after restoring an image, as part of an imaging workflow. I highly recommend DeployStudio for system imaging. Occasionally, I still use the method outlined below to tweak these fields.
Part of my client management process involves using the “Computer Info #1″ field in Apple Remote Desktop 3 (ARD) to store the physical location of each machine on my network. This helps me quickly identify a machine when I’m looking at a list of several hundred Macs. Currently, I enter this information manually on each computer when they’re re-imaged over the summer. I’m always looking for ways to reduce the number of steps in my imaging process, so I’ve been trying to find a terminal command that I can use to push out this setting to multiple machines at once through ARD.
After much searching, I found my answer:
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -configure -computerinfo -set1 -1 your info goes here
Use ARD’s ‘Send UNIX Command’ feature and send this to the machine(s) you wish to update. Enter the information you’d like in place of your info goes here. If you’d like to enter a space between words, use a backslash and a space like this: First\ Word
ARD allows you up to 4 fields of computer info, so just follow the convention for those as well (-set2 -2, -set3 -3, etc). I’ve tested this with OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 with success. It was unsuccessful on a machine running OS X Server 10.3 (an old eMac running as a CD-ROM server, serving up disk images). To find out more command line options for setting up and configuring Apple Remote Desktop, enter the following command in a terminal window (you’ll be asked to authenticate as an administrator):
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -help
Even though doing this manually only takes a few seconds, it certainly adds up when you have to do it a few hundred times. I can also now do this at the time of imaging, or any time without having to control the remote screen through the GUI. I may eventually automate this and incorporate it into a post-flight script as part of my imaging workflow. If I do, I’ll be sure to post the script.
Posted by acletras on Dec 20, 2009 in
Apple Since I’ve been getting a little bit of traffic here lately, I decided it was a good time to sign up for Skribit. Skribit is a service that was born out of an Atlanta Startup Weekend a few years ago, and helps bloggers cure writer’s block by letting their readers suggest ideas for new posts and content. Skribit was co-founded by rising Internet star Paul Stamatiou, an internet and pseudo IRL acquaintance of mine.
I’m hoping to find out what you are all interested in reading, which in turn, will help me post more frequent updates. Feel free to use the sidebar widget, or fly-out suggestion button on the right.
Tags: Blog News
