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Information Technology

Recognitions

A few days ago, Anthony Reimer posted to his blog about Recognition, Retirement, and Remembrance. I suggest you give it a read. I don’t have much to say about Retirement and Remembrance, but I do feel I have a lot to say about recognition. While we don’t have any formal place to acknowledge recognition, I feel I can do so here. First off, I should thank: Anthony Reimer I’ve gotten to know Anthony over the past few years. My last trip to MacAdmins we got to spend some time together in person and chat about everything and anything. He’s very knowledgable and extremely supportive of the community. While he’s not… Read More »Recognitions

Apple Music screenshot

Plex Smart Playlists

People seemed to appreciate some guidance I gave on smart playlists, so I thought I would post this here for anyone looking for this info. It began because Plex’s smart shuffle is terrible, and I didn’t know it was a feature you can turn off. But let’s start earlier. I stopped using iTunes (Apple Music) a while ago and moved my music library over to Plex. Well, that’s a bit of a lie. I do still use Music to import CDs and use it for its file sorting features. I buy a new album (digital or physical), put it into Apple Music, then Resilio Sync syncs my ~/Music folder to… Read More »Plex Smart Playlists

System software from developer “Apple Inc.” has been updated.

Apple wants end users to know what they’re authorizing and what system/kernel extensions are running on their computer. Yet I got this message. I have no idea what it is and what I’m authorizing. I know it’s from “Apple Inc.” but that’s it. There’s no GUI to show you what system/kernel extensions are running, so I have no idea what it is. I can run systemextensionsctl list but that gave me: I can run kextstat and I get the following, which doesn’t tell me what is pending approval or if any of them are unapproved. How am I supposed to know what is? Am I missing something? Am I supposed… Read More »System software from developer “Apple Inc.” has been updated.

Rename Computer using Scripting and Google Sheets

Google has made some changes that made this script not work, but it was an easy fix, once I bothered to look at why it wasn’t working. The page redirects to another page, and thus the cURL doesn’t work as usual. Instead you need to add the redirect flag to the cURL command so, instead of: You want: So the full script would be:

Missing Profiles Button in System Preferences

See my previous post for a full history on this. In it, I had migrated from WorkspaceONE to Mosyle. One some devices I needed to clear the profiles database to be able to remove WS1 and enroll with Mosyle. When you do that the Profiles button in System Preferences goes away, forever. Well, I did that one machine running macOS 10.14 and upgraded it to 10.15. Once upgraded, the profiles button returned! HOORAY!

macOS 11 Compatibily Check

Yesterday, Apple announced macOS 11. I need to know what members of my computer fleet are compatible. William Smith, aka talkingmoose, was kind enough to post the regex for what models are compatible with macOS 11. You can find that here. I tested Smith’s regex in BBEdit and it worked as expected. The question was, how do I get an easy list of my fleet in our MDM, Mosyle? I sent a Custom Command to my fleet, it’s here on GitHub. I told it to run that custom command on all computers and to store the results as “Big Sur.” So now I needed to use that data to create… Read More »macOS 11 Compatibily Check

FileMaker Export to Tab Delimited

I want to export a table to a tab delimited text file1. FileMaker supports that without any question. What it doesn’t do is create a header row. I’m using this file to import into PickATime, a software designed to book parent-teacher conferences. I want to automate this as much as possible. So how do I get the header rows that are required? In FileMaker my field might be called OpenApplyID, whereas PickATime requires the field to be called StudentID. So I can’t just take those field titles. There’s new script steps in FileMaker 18 that will let me do this. Script Go to Layout [ “StudentContacts” (StudentContacts) ] Show All… Read More »FileMaker Export to Tab Delimited

Rename Computer using Scripting and Google Sheets

UPDATE: You need to allow redirects in your cURL by adding -L. See this post. With Apple’s Device Enrollment program, when a organization-owned device first turns on, it checks in with Device Enrollment and gets the information to know what MDM is managing it and how to contact it. That MDM system can then install what’s known as a bootstrapping package. In our old bootstrapping package, which was developed by an employee no longer here, was a giant if statement. If SerialNumber = x then set ComputerName to Bob, elseif SerialNumber = y then set ComputerName to Frank, elseif SerialNumber = z then set ComputerName to Jane. Pretty simple and… Read More »Rename Computer using Scripting and Google Sheets

Let’s Encrypt with CPanel

A lot of web hosts have Let’s Encrypt built into the CPanel. Not mine. I was kinda annoyed. I tweeted at them to ask if they’d support it. They wouldn’t. So I decided I would make it work myself. To do this is pertty simple. I’m just going to start by copying and pasting text from a previous article. Open up your Terminal.app (Go to the Go menu, choose Utilities, double-click on Terminal). This isn’t even a step, you should know this. Step One – Install Homebrew /usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)” At this point, you will be prompted to press RETURN to continue. Press the return key. It will… Read More »Let’s Encrypt with CPanel

OMG! APPLE IS GUTTING SERVER.APP!!!! Part 3 DNS to BIND

In July, I will be presenting at MacAdmins at PSU. My talk will be called “OMG! APPLE IS GUTTING SERVER.APP!!!!” I will be using my blog to document all the processes taken to get all the data. The goal of this is to find easy ways to move away from Server.app while utilizing the existing Apple hardware in your server closet and macOS. Sure you can move to a new system, but you might not have the money or time. You can find the slide deck here. Server.app -> BIND So before I start, I should say that this is fully documented in Apple’s macOS Server Service Migration documentation, which… Read More »OMG! APPLE IS GUTTING SERVER.APP!!!! Part 3 DNS to BIND