Category: Useful Articles
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Manipulating the System Policy Database with Configuration Profiles, Part 2
You’re going to want to read Part 1 of this piece first. It covered managing the installation of packages that are not notarized. This section of the article covers the operational limits of doing the same thing for applications, using the operation:execute verb. There are several caveats to all of this that may make this […]
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Manipulating the System Policy Database with Configuration Profiles
First up, this post is a direct response to my previous posts on this summer’s talk about notarization. Notarization is a subject of much discussion, and there’s a lot happening out there. If you are looking for an exhaustive summary of notarization through many, many links, might I recommend this compilation post on Mr. Macintosh. […]
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Apple Updates Notarization Requirements
Notarization is a big topic amongst Mac Admins, as we start to prepare to release macOS 10.15 Catalina to our fleets. Distributing tools, and allowing users to setup their own environments, is a huge part of the Mac Admin life. Today, Apple released some new guidance concerning the requirements for notarization of software packages. To […]
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Mac Admins Talk: The Loyal Order of Notaries
The Notarization of binaries with Apple Notary Service is a fascinating topic worth exploring, and in this year’s talk at Mac Admins, I delved deep into the subject. The current version of macOS now requires all kernel extensions not just to be signed by their authors, but to be notarized by the Apple Notary Service. […]
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Using Prey with SimpleMDM to Recover a Stolen Laptop
Monday morning, I got the call that no one wants to get: “The lock was jimmied. They got some of our computers.” Immediately, we sprang into action. We’re big fans of SimpleMDM and Watchman Monitoring, and both of those tools came in handy. The first thing we did was check the logs from Watchman Monitoring’s […]
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Installing Ubuntu 17.10 on ESXi, from a Mac Client, to the ESXi Server
This is a short how-to post on how to install Ubuntu 17.04 on an ESXi server using VMware Fusion
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The Mac Pro That Just Would Not Shut Down
This post is part travelogue, part breadcrumbs, part manual on how to troubleshoot a problem. It is posted here as a signpost to others, to discuss how I approached a particular problem with a 2013 Mac Pro cylinder that refused to power down. The problem began innocuously enough. Sometime after 10.13.3, my Dad’s 2013 Mac […]
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The 2017 Daily Carry
When a consultant friend (Hi M!) asked what I carried with me every day, it was the first time that I’d stopped to think of everything I’ve collected over the years to carry with me on a day-to-day basis. Based on their challenge, I’ve catalogued what’s in my daily carry bag, and I present it […]
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Tech Tips for a Hostile World
I’m not all the way through Kubler Ross just yet, but I’m starting to think about how to respond in a way that’s productive, engaged, and focused on reality. I’m a tech person, so I’m gonna talk about tech things. There are people that are going to be able to talk to you about effective […]
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Deploying NoMAD with Configuration Profiles
It feels a little silly to be so excited about something so simple as NoMAD, but there’s nothing simple about NoMAD behind the scenes. It’s doing a lot of heavy lifting that you’d usually need binding to accomplish. Preventing the complication of binding simplifies your Mac environment. On the Macadmins.org Podcast recently, we spent an […]
Cannonball 