Computer Info #1 from the Command Line
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 do 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 Feb 9, 2009 in
Apple,
Leopard,
Management,
Tiger,
Tutorials 
I realize the topic of this post may be a bit specialized, but I would surely have liked to had something like this as a guide when I recently had to overcome this challenge.
Most of our entire campus is still running OS X 10.4.11, for the sole reason that login times for a .local Active Directory domain STILL take 2-3 minutes (as of 10.5.6). Our Lower School purchased some Lego robotics kits which came with new software called WeDo. The minimum requirements are OS X 10.5, and the installer will not run on OS X 10.4.
To get around this, I did the following: Read more…
Posted by acletras on Nov 21, 2008 in
Apple,
Tips,
Tutorials 
I use the Google Notifier for Mac to alert me when my gmail account has new messages and lately, I’ve grown tired of the standard OS X notification sounds that it lets you use. I wanted to use my own sounds so that I can more easily distinguish this aural alert from other notifications.
Google Notifier lets you choose from the Mac’s standard notification sounds, or two custom tones that Google supplies. We’re simply going to replace one of these tones with our own. Read more…
Posted by acletras on Aug 9, 2008 in
Apple,
Tips,
Tutorials,
iPhone 
While digging around for a native solution to easily drag and drop pictures from my Mac directly to my iPhone, I stumbled upon the fact that Image Capture has the ability to share imaging devices connected to your Mac.
This would be useful for something like a small office setting with one scanner, which all users could access from their Macs rather than having to use the one machine the scanner is connected to. This works for almost any imaging device, including the iPhone.
With your iPhone connected, launch Image Capture and select Devices>Browe Devices… from the menu bar. Select your iPhone and click the Sharing… button at the bottom of the window. Next, check the Share my devices and Enable Web Sharing boxes. Provide a shared name, a password (optional) and click OK. You’ll now notice a Shared checkbox for your iPhone. Check it to share your phone.
Click Sharing.. once again. You’ll now notice an IP address underneath the Web Sharing check box. Open your web browser of choice and type in the IP address, including the port number (the numbers after the colon). You are now browsing the pictures on your iPhone (and any other devices shared with Image Capture) through your web browswer! Note, this is an internal IP address and will only work on your local network, but it’s a great way to share your pictures with others on your LAN.
Posted by acletras on Aug 7, 2008 in
Apple,
Management,
Tips,
Tutorials While configuring our Middle and Upper School art rooms at work, I ran into an issue that was potentially going to cause a massive headache. How to use Workgroup Manager (WGM) to manage a local, shared USB printer?
Managing networked printers is easy with WGM, it even lets you decide if users have the ability to connect their own local USB printer. It does not, however, allow you to share this local printer and manage it.
What’s an admin to do? The first thing I did was start digging around for property list files, and that’s exactly where I found my answer.
Read more…
Posted by acletras on May 31, 2007 in
Apple,
Technology,
Tutorials A few months ago, I set someone up with a 24″ iMac, to do music and video production. He imported a short movie he shot previously, and added sound effects, music, titles, etc using iMovie. All was well and the video turned out excellent, but he ran into a problem when sharing the movie to iDVD.
The disc would process and start to encode, then hang at audio encoding, with a spinning beach ball cursor, and the burn icon in iDVD stopped spinning. In addition, Force Quit and Activity Monitor showed the application as Not Responding. We tried everything. After multiple trips to the genius bar (which prompted him to tell one genius he didn’t deserve the title!) and multiple calls to Apple support, we finally found a tech at one of the call centers who actually knew exactly what was going on.
The problem is that he shot the video with the camcorder in 12bit audio mode, and iDVD likes 16bit audio. Shooting in 12bit allows you some flexibility to add more audio when editing without a computer, but since this is going through a computer, we can strictly use 16bit.
First off, if you’ll be doing all of your editing on a computer, permanently switch your camcorder to 16bit audio mode!!!! What to do with footage you’ve already shot in 12bit? Simple–import it to an iMovie project, then share that iMovie back to a blank, brand new miniDV tape on your camcorder (which has now been set to 16bit audio, remember?). Once it’s on your tape, you can re-import it again to a new iMovie project, and this time, the audio is coming over in 16bit. Both sending to the camera, and then back to iMovie happen in real time (i.e. your movie will play through to the end as if you’re sitting down to watch it), so this might take a while if you have a long movie.
You can then proceed to add your titles, music, effects, chapters, etc, and share to iDVD when you are finished. You should notice a pretty decent decrease in the time it takes to encode, as well as a resolution to any crashes or hangs you were experiencing before.
This issue came up today at work when a colleague tried to burn a two hour iMovie project, so hopefully this can save other from the time wasted and frustration associated with trying to figure this out. Good luck!
