On October 18th Microsoft released version 8 of it’s Remote Desktop app via the App Store. Which is great as the older version had been more than buggy & we’ve just started a project which requires users to RDP into VM’s.
Below are the steps taken to figure out how a connection is created and stored, as well as a way to script the connections.
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Recently we started rolling out some new printers, this has been done using the script i’ve detailed here.
Normally we just create the printer on the macs & point the queue to the right PPD. This doesn’t enforce any default settings, & in doing so things have been going smoothly.
However, when deploying a Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C5240i B2 we noticed that the Mac’s were defaulting to duplex.
After checking the on board B2 Fiery, we saw this setting was enabled.. so we disabled it & hoped that would apply to the Mac clients.. sadly it didn’t.
Below is how we overcome this
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A part of some of our users workflows includes them taking multiple screenshots. They take said screenshots via the keyboard commands & as they do this largely in bulk on a project by project basis they asked for a way to change the folder that screenshots go to from ~/Desktop to a location of their choice.
Below is my solution to this request.
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We’re in the midst of rolling out a new image to our macs on 10.8.2. Historically Java has not been needed but we added the latest Java 7 update as a matter of course, but post-rollout people now require Java 6 (how often does that happen?).
This new requirement came in just after Apple disabled Java 6 on 10.7+ Macs (as detailed a little here: http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/disabled-java-plugins-xprotect-updater/ ).
Greg Neagle & Rich Trouton have several solutions in re-enabling the various parts needed to get Java 6 working (however they required an order which I was not following Java 6 had never been installed as part of my image.
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We image our Macs with a partition for the System data & another for the User data.
That, in turn, allows us to image the Macs preserving the user data.
Except the permissions will be incorrect on the home folders, for our solution to this, see below.
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NOTE: With Safari 6.1x & 7.2x the method to deploy Safari extensions has changed, please see the new method here.
I was asked sometime ago to deploy my companies bookmarks to Safari on all our managed Macs.
I went through a lot of pain trying to add a folder to the Bookmarks bar with my companies website & preserve the users bookmarks. But, Benjamin Bailey on the Mac Enterprise list mentioned Safari Extensions.. & I soon had a branded toolbar to deploy!
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The below should enable Extensions in Safari 5.x & 6.x.
defaults write com.apple.Safari ExtensionsEnabled -bool YES
Way back in 2010 I posted a little note on disabling Safari’s Pop-Up Blocker From Terminal..
Well it looks like with Safari 5.1.x & 6.x things have changed, the below should now perform the same:
defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2JavaScriptCanOpenWindowsAutomatically -bool true
Via MCX:
Display Name: Safari 5.1+ Disable Pop-Up Blocker
Application Domain: com.apple.Safari
Key Name: com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2JavaScriptCanOpenWindowsAutomatically
Key Type: boolean
Key Value: true
For my future deployments, i’ve decided to partition my managed Macs HD’s with 33% for the OS (which i’ve kept as being called Macintosh HD) & the remaining 67% as User data (which i’ve labelled Users HD).
To do this i’ve been using fstab to mount the “Users HD” partition to /Users. Below is how i achieve this, hope it helps.
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Subject’s a mouthful eh? Basically, I needed for my 10.7 Macs to authenticate to our RADIUS wireless network using PEAP authentication & the Mac’s Certificate from our domain.
Below are the steps taken.