iPhone is disabled. Try again in 23,053,554 minutes

Standard
iphine-disabled-crop

Way back in Jan 2014 grabbed a test iPhone & after charging I was greeted with the above.

After various exclamations along the lines of “Holy fishsticks, Batman!” we did get the iPhone enabled & this did not involve a time machine or me waiting the 23,053,554 minutes for the device.

Below is how & some guess work as to what happened.

Continue reading

Some Mac App Store Apps “Damaged” Prompting For “Redownload”

Standard
AppStore

Early today people launching some Mac App Store purchased apps where greeted with errors upon launching them.

This has been pretty widely reported, & after reading a few other articles I started to panic. After which I wanted to try see how this would affect us Mac admins & if I could help detect affected apps.

Continue reading

Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Standard
Screenshot 2015-11-07 22.04.57

Sometimes being an Apple admin in an org with a largely Microsoft infrastructure can be a bit of a chore.

It’s not uncommon to hear of Windows admins dismissing issues as being an “Apple” issue without actually expending any effort to look into the issues at all.

However, I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to bend the ear of several sympathetic Windows admins & this has lead to posts such as “How To: Check Your Active Directory Domains Time” & “OSX & AD Certificate Requests, some tips”.

This post is another of those ilk & one that came up quite recently in the MacAdmins.org Slack & I mentioned this in my JNUC 2015 talks Q&A too, thought it would be a good time to share.

Continue reading

ditto: “Operation not permitted” from SIP protected locations on El Capitan

Standard
Terminal

When trying to bring 10.11 support to AutoCasperNBI & AutoImagrNBI I stumbled across an odd issue.

On the flight to JNUC2015 I loaded up my 10.11 GM VM & figured it out.

Incredulous, I double checked this with James Ridsdale, Darren Wallace & David Acland. All of whom were located near me on the flight & all had their various MacBooks out running Keynote, Terminal &/or were running VM’s (spot the IT Crowd).

Below is what I found, steps to reproduce & a link to the bug on Open Radar.

Continue reading

AD users losing Admin rights when off the Domain

Standard
Screenshot 2015-11-04 08.36.04

This issue of “AD users losing Admin rights when off the Domain” is a wee head scratching moment that comes up from time to time.

Having recently updated the script I use workaround this issue, I decided it was time for a blog post.

The script, an explanation of the script & the issue itself are detailed below.

Continue reading

Let’s Talk About Certificates

Standard
lets-talk-about-certificates_1500_844_70_s_1444845395

At the recent JAMFNation User Conference (JNUC2015) I gave a talk titled “Let’s Talk About Certificates” (original title, “Let’s Talk About Certs, Baby!).

The talks subtitle, “A tale of Alice, Bob, Eve & a stretched analogy…” gave some warning that things may go off base for a talks which main content, trying to demystify certificates, was rather dry.

PKI was the main talking point as well as some of the changes coming from the CA/Browser Forum, iOS 9 & El Capitan as well as a new CA on the block coming soon.

Links to the video as well as a PDF of the Keynote & some extra resources can be found below.

I’d urge you to spend 30 minutes watching the video. I had a lot of fun putting it together & the feedback I’ve had is that is was funny & informative.

Continue reading

JSS Setting Software Update Server To http://:/index.sucatalog

Standard
SoftwareUpdate

Recently we found that the JSS was setting our clients Software Update Catalog URL to http://:/index.sucatalog.

Well, as detailed previously, we moved from using Software Update servers to Caching.

The move to caching servers actually meant I shot myself in the foot some & caused my own issue. JAMF Support got me things sorted & below is how & my guess work as to what was happening.

Continue reading

How To NetBoot A VMWare Fusion & ESXi Hosted VM

Standard
VMWareFusion

For a number of years, OS X VMWare Fusion VM’s either hosted locally or on ESXi have supported NetBoot. Rich Trouton has covered this before here & here.

(Incidentally whilst this post refers to VMWare OS X VM’s, you can also NetBoot Parallels OS X VM’s & Kyle Bareis has a post on NetBooting VM’s created with that here.)

On occasion, the odd question still pops up on how to do this. So I’m posting this in the hope of rebroadcasting the message for any that have missed it.

Continue reading

Project Updates October 2015

Standard
Projects.001

So it’s been a busy few months, whilst I’ve generally been falling apart I’ve also been busy with various projects I own or am involved in & a side project to those has had a massive update.

As such, I felt it was a good time to quickly post an update on the goings on. Details below.

Continue reading

CoreTypes.bundle & icons for dialogs, scripts, slides, Self Service & Munki Managed Software Center

Standard
Screenshot 2015-10-17 15.36.00

For a number of years now I have used the icons found within the CoreTypes.bundle for dialogs, scripts, slides & Self Service.

I thought it was common practice to use them, but after a few conversations at JNUC2015 it appears I was wrong.

So the below is a quick write up on them.

Continue reading