JNUC 2014 AutoCasperNBI and the Casper NetInstall Creator – Session Slides & Links

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Photo courtesy of Richard Purves

On the last day of JNUC2014, I gave my first public talk. The session was dedicated to AutoCasperNBI and the Casper NetInstall Creator.

You can find a video of the talk here, with the other sessions videos from JNUC2014 being available here.

Many thanks to those whom attended, I think the session went well. Lots of humour (some unintended), & some great collaboration. Especially in the Q&A.

Also, a special mention to those whom beta-tested AutoCasperNBI & my JAMF buddies Dan & Nick (mostly for putting up with me).

Below are some links to the content that was covered, as well as some links from the Q&A.

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Thinking Big: Scaling JSS Infrastructures for the Mobile Workforce

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Mikey (3rd from left in the above), reached out to me pre-JNUC2014 about “Thinking Big: Scaling JSS Infrastructures for the Mobile Workforce”

It was a fun panel to be a part of, many of the members on the panel had taught me so so much over the years &/or are great friends of mine.

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AutoCasperNBI – Release

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If you hang around on JAMFNation, you may have seen the “AutoCasperNBI – open beta” thread.

Well today, (whilst presenting at JNUC2014) I’m happy to announce the full release of AutoCasperNBI.

To all those whom helped throughout the beta, be it via JAMFNation, Twitter, ##osx-server IRC or your own blogs & posts: THANK YOU!

I hope you find the app of some use, & that we can develop it further.

For more information, go to: AutoCasperNBI

Deploying & Installing Safari Extensions on Safari 6.1+ & 7.2+

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As mentioned previously, we deploy a custom Safari Toolbar with links to various sites to our Macs.

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With the release of Safari 6.2 & 7.1 Apple has changed the method to install extensions, once a Mac has been updated to Safari 6.2 or 7.1 the user is prompted to “migrate” their extensions.This change breaks the previously posted method to install extensions, as the installed extensions list is now in the users Keychain (!?).

Below is how to install extensions via Self Service, which in testing works for all Safari versions & allows the user to reinstall if they recreate their login.keychain.

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AirWatch Self Service Portal Not Showing All Enrolled Devices For A User

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We use AirWatch as our Mobile Device Management platform, & recently we launched the “Self Service Portal” to our user base.

However, we hit an issue where only a few devices were available within the “Self Service Portal”.

Below is what we found, and how we resolved this issue.

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How To Create A Custom Safari Extension Bar

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Almost 2 years ago, I posted how to deploy a custom Safari Toolbar. But until now I have not posted on how to make the Toolbar (READ: Extension Bar) until now.

The reason for the delay was due to me not really being literate with the technology used to create an Extension Bar, 2 years on & i’m still not!

We use the Extension Bar to deploy links to company websites & resources. As it seems most web based products we have only support Safari on a Mac, we’ve found this is a good way to drive people to use Safari to access these sites, even  if they use other browsers for general browsing.

I hope the below helps you to create your own.

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10.8 Clients Not Connecting To EAP-TLS Wireless With w2k8 NPS

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Earlier today we started to tighten up one of our wireless networks, moving from PEAP to EAP-TLS authentication. In testing on 10.9.x & win7 clients, all worked well. But when deploying the same config profile that connected the 10.9.x clients to a 10.8.x Mac, the device failed to authenticate.

The 10.8.x clients console log didn’t show much information, so I took a look on the NPS servers logs (which are not a pretty sight) & after a time we came to a solution.

See below for the gory details.

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JSS Using Wrong Distribution Points After v8 – v9 Upgrade

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We updated our JSS from 8.73  – 9.22 back in January, we thought all was well until we needed to deploy some large packages.

This lead to our network guys not being to happy as Mac clients were downloading a 200MB installer across our MPLS irregardless of the distribution points assigned in our network segments.

Below are more details on the issue, and the fix

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Check EFI Password State Extension Attribute

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JAMF have a great article on deploying the binary needed to set a firmware password on 2010+ Macs via the Casper Suite, here.

I recently had a chance to play with it, but found that the below command (which is used by the following EA to check EFI Password status) often returns nothing or just 0 after running. Regardless if an EFI password is set or not.

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/JAMF/bin/setregproptool -c

So below is a different version of the before linked Extension Attribute, using “expect” & maybe a inelegant check.. but hey, if it works!

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Submit User Information From AD Into The JSS At Login v2

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A couple of years ago I posted on how we “Submit User Information From AD Into The JSS At Login” Since the  Casper Suite 8.61 was release, the JSS has been able to perform this function. Below is a guide on how to leverage this.

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