How To: Create a Microsoft Remote Desktop 8 Connection

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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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Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C5240i B2 Printing Duplex

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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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Change Screenshot Location From Self Service With GUI Prompt

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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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Getting Java 6 working on a Mac that has only had Java 7 installed

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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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Correct AD Users Home Mobile Home Folder Permissions

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Home

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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Git-ting with the program

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I’m finally Git-ting with the program & have created a GitHub repo: https://github.com/macmule

For a long time i’ve been unhappy with WordPress’s code handling, & as i can’t be bothered to find a new theme that may work better, i’ve decided to re-post all my longish scripts onto the Hub.

The added bonus being that if any of you learned readers find an issue, or wish to submit an update you can!

Now Git to it!

iDevice Mail Error: “Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server failed” / “The operation couldn’t be completed. (DAErrorDomain error 111.)”

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Infrequently we’ve been seeing the  below error on some iDevices after enrolling into our MDM solution.

“Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server failed”

Plugging those devices into a computer running iPhone Configuration Utility would reveal the following errors in the logs.

“The operation couldn’t be completed. (DAErrorDomain error 111.)”

Realising we had maybe a more Exchange side issue, we looked at the logs on the Exchange Server we were connecting to.. these logs contained the following errors:

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Error: “Permission denied > (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,keyboard-interactive)” on Mountain Lion (10.8)

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I use RSYNC over SSH & launchagents to keep my Casper distribution points in sync with the Master.

However on upgrading the master to 10.8.2, the SSH connection would error with the message:

“Permission denied > (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,keyboard-interactive)”

I re-ran through the steps i’d used previously.. reached out to JAMF support, JAMFNation & the MacEnterprise Mailing List.. still no joy..

So, it then started to think that maybe the change in OS for the master meant a change in method.. after Googling “mountain lion authorized_keys” I came across the below blog, with revealed the answer!

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Deploying & Installing Safari Toolbars

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Safari-extension

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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Enabling Extensions in Safari 5.x & 6.x

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The below should enable Extensions in Safari 5.x & 6.x.

defaults write com.apple.Safari ExtensionsEnabled -bool YES