Displaying all posts for Automation

Updated: Send softwareupdate command through ARD

by April 8, 2010 » Add more comments.

This script will run software updates only on machines that are logged out. This ensures you don’t reboot machines that are in use and don’t leave machines in an inconsistent state (by not rebooting after patching). This is not a perfect solution to patching but it’s better than nothing. You Read more »

Script to Configure the Mac OS X firewall

by April 7, 2010 » Add more comments.
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Here is a script that can be deployed via ARD, Absolute Manage (LANrev), LANDesk or virtually any other method to enable and configure the firewall for 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6. You will need to decide how exactly you want your clients firewalls configured. Pay special attention to the stealth setting. Read more »

Allow Non-Admin users to Manage Printers

by January 24, 2009 » Add more comments.

Apple added a "feature" to Leopard which restricts non administrator users from managing printers on their Macs. While this is desired behavior on a public machine such as a classroom, it is a problem for single user machines such as faculty, staff and 1:1 deployments.

slapd error in system.log every 10 seconds

by January 6, 2009 » Add more comments.

I had 2 Leopard servers (one with 10.5.5, one with 10.5.6), both displaying the following messages in the system.log every 10 seconds. com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd[283]): Exited with exit code: 1
com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

LANDesk – Adding Apple Warranty Data to Inventory

by November 3, 2008 » Add more comments.
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A bash script that will do an online lookup of the Mac’s serial # to determine its’ warranty status, then add that data to custom data for LANDesk.

NetRestore – Specifying Packages to install using PHP Services

by September 15, 2007 » Add the first comment.
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NetRestore PHP Services helps automate machine deployments by automating several tasks such as machine naming, network configuration and specifying which image is used for groups of machines and several other preferences. It can also be customized to add funtionality for tasks that are not already built in. This post will Read more »

Bind to AD using Apple Remote Desktop

by September 2, 2007 » Add more comments.

Need to bind a handful of Macs to Active Directory remotely? There are a couple scripts online already, including one from MacEnterprise and from Bombich. But I’ve never been able to get those to work when using with ARD. Either the AD plugin wasn’t activated or AD wasn’t added to Read more »

Convert Local Account’s Home to AD account with Local Home

by July 31, 2007 » Add more comments.

Here is a script that I use to convert a local home folder to be used by an Active Directory account. This script will rename the home folder first, then delete the local user account from NetInfo and rename the home folder back and change the permissions so the AD Read more »

Bind to Active Directory Applescript

by July 28, 2007 » Add more comments.

There are several methods out there to automate binding to Active Directory including over Apple Remote Desktop, after a machine has been imaged using a login hook and a number of other methods. We are just starting to move our Macs to AD. Most of the machines are already imaged Read more »