How To: Connect Clients To Lion Servers Apple Software Update Service

Standard
UPDATE: Apple have now posted a support document verifying the above, it's available here.

In 10.6 Apple release unified the ASUS url into http://myserver.fqdn:8088/index.sucatalog as per the this page. This same URL will work for 10.7 clients too.

How To: Change Lions Scroll Direction

Standard

This confused me for a while!!

The default scroll behaviour in Lion is in the direction that your finger is moving in, like iOS. Not the inverted scroll used for years.

To change, open System Preferences > Mouse & untick “Move content in the direction if finder movement when scrolling or navigating”

Slow Login For AD Mobile Accounts when off the Office LAN

Standard

This is an oldie but a goodie..

I’ve found in various environments that if you’ve got AD Mobile Accounts setup on a mac that has an Airport Card as is not connected to the Office LAN logins can take upto 10 minutes.

In all of these environments, the AD Domain was not resolvable outside the LAN.

There are three solutions for this:

Continue reading

Installing Adobe Unit Types 2.1.0

Standard

This post advises why you may need to update the Adobe Unit Types.osax file & how to do so using Casper.

The Adobe Unit Types.osax file that shipped with Photoshop CS4 and CS3 is a 32-bit component. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) requires some 64-bit scripting environments.

This file is placed in /Library/ScriptingAdditions/ & can cause Applescripts to fail to run.

Both Adobe & JAMF have posted help docs on how to fix this & this post is to advise how I’ve deployed to corrected osax file to affected machines.

Continue reading

Set Start Screen Saver To A Hot Corner

Standard

To set start screen saver to a hot corner, run the following as a policy in Casper.

Continue reading

Get Silverlight Version

Standard

The below Extension Attribute checks if Microsofts Silverlight Plugin is installed, if it’s not it returns the message not installed, if it is installed it returns the version number.

Continue reading

Setting User & OS Language Post Install from Casper

Standard

We need to have different configurations etc based on  the major european languages.

We were orignally looking at setting the OS Language via the custom os install options, but have been advised by JAMF that this does not work.

So we needed a work around to achieve the same.

I’ve got this working by narrowing it down to 4 plists… I’m then editing these for each language needed & making Composer dmg’s of each plist to distribute.

The upside of using this method is that we can use a single config per OS version with smart configs based on it that change the language as required.

Basically, make the changes & copy the below files:

Continue reading

Cannot Launch Applications From NetBoot Image

Standard

I just spent too many hours struggling with a newly created NetBoot Image that booted, but would not launch any applications from the dock & the item that was due to launch at login didn’t (Casper Imaging). However, if i logged out the NetBoot user & logged back in, all was well!

Come midnight (I was remotely NetBooting a machine), I decided to cut my losses & come in next day which was my day off.

Turns out the NetBoot was fine, the issue was simply that the iMac was building had a PC Keyboard connected & not a Mac one!!

As the tagline says, doing the donkey work to make you look like a smart ass!!

How To: Set OSX’s Screen Saver via Script

Standard

Throughout my career as a Mac Admin i’ve often been asked to enforce a screen saver. One environment required a screen saver to always be set, but to allow people to change the desktop background. Another required a screen saver to be set to the corporate standard at each login. This script has been used in both environments to great affect.

Continue reading

Unlock Each Secure System Preference & Allow All Users To Unlock

Standard

UPDATE: The below has been superseded by the post found here. I'd also advise looking at authbuddy instead of the below

The below will untick the option System Preferences > Security > “Require Password To Unlock Each Secure Preference” & allow all users to unlock these preferences.

Continue reading