Dec 2016 – Mac Managers Meeting

13 Dec Dec 2016 – Mac Managers Meeting

Dec 21st 2016 – University of Utah, Mac Managers Meeting

The University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting is held monthly at the Marriott Library on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 1 PM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This months meeting will be held on Wed, Dec 21st 2016, and we will provide live broadcasted and archives that will be made available 2-3 days after the meeting.

If you have suggestions on presentations, questions or comments, please your the Contact Us option.

d3 Software Deployment & Patch Management – By Chris Lasell, Pixar Animation Studios

• Automatic software updates on clients when new versions are released on the server
• Pre-release piloting of new packages
• Customizable slideshow presented during logout/reboot installs
• Installs and uninstalls are conditional on the exit status of pre-flight scripts
• Packages can be expired (auto-uninstalled) after a period of disuse
• Both the client and admin tools are command-line only and fully scriptable
• Command-line options allow integration with developer workflows & other automation

It interfaces with Casper mostly via the REST API using the JSS Ruby module. It also accesses the JSS’s backend MySQL database directly to provide enhanced features. In this presentation, we’ll see an overview of d3, what enhancements it can provide, how to install and use it, how to contribute to it’s development, and plans for integrating with jamf’s own patch management as they roll it out.

% d3admin add transmogrifier --walkthru
  ------------------------------------
  Adding pilot d3 package 'transmogrifier-2.0-7'
  with values inherited from 'transmogrifier-2.0-6'
  ------------------------------------
  1) Basename: transmogrifier
  2) Version: 2.0
  3) Revision: 7
  4) JSS Package Name: transmogrifier-2.0-7.pkg
  5) Description:
  ----
  This is a descriptive description
  it describes this package in great depth.
  ----
  6) Dist. Point Filename: transmogrifier-2.0-7.pkg
  7) Category: testing
  8) Limited to OS's: >=10.10.x
  9) Limited to CPU type: none
  10) Needs Reboot: false
  11) Uninstallable: true
  12) Uninstalls older installs: true
  13) Installation prohibited by processes matching: Safari
  14) Auto installed for groups: standard
  15) Not installed for groups: byod
  16) Pre-install script: transmogrifier-install
  17) Post-install script: transmogrifier-install
  18) Pre-uninstall script: transmogrifier-uninstall
  19) Post-uninstall script: transmogrifier-uninstall
  20) Expration: 30
  21) Expration Path: /Applications/Transmogrifier.app/Contents/MacOS/transmogrifier
  22) Source path: /Users/Shared/Transmogrifier.pkg
  Which to change? (1-22, 'x' = done, ^c=cancel): x

  *****************************************
  Ahoy there! You are about to:
  Create a new package 'transmogrifier-2.0-7' in d3
  with settings shown above.
  *****************************************

  Are you SURE? (y/n): y
  Saving new pilot transmogrifier-2.0-7to the server...
  Indexing...
  Uploading to the Master Distribution Point...
  Done!
  To pilot it, run 'sudo d3 install transmogrifier-2.0-7' on a test machine.
  To make it live, run 'd3admin live transmogrifier-2.0-7' on your machine.

For more information, see web site:

http://pixaranimationstudios.github.io/depot3/

An Apple Peeler all his life, Chris holds a degree in the Culinary Arts and was once a hotel pastry chef at Dartmouth College. He bought his first Mac in 1986 and, with access to Dartmouth’s internet connection, started peeling a different kind of Apple. In 1989 he became a Mac and Unix support tech. Lured to the northwest by all the great beer, Chris moved to Portland, Oregon in ’91 and did tech support and administration at Reed College for another decade. In 2002 he decided to wander around the country on a bicycle for eighteen months, and eventually landed on the Mac team at Pixar. Chris is the creator of ruby-jss, a Ruby interface to the jamfPro REST API, as well as d3, a patch-management solution that enhances the Casper Suite.

To view archived presentation, click here.

NoMAD Introduction – By Joel Rennich, GM Trusource Labs

An introduction to NoMAD, a menu bar application which can help you get all of the functionality of binding to AD without actually doing the bind! Learn how NoMAD works in both bound and unbound environments, what additional functionality it can bring to your organization and how you can easily deploy and manage it.

For more information about NoMAD, see the following website:

https://gitlab.com/Mactroll/NoMAD

Joel is the General Manager for Trusource Labs Enterprise Services in Austin, Texas providing Apple device management and help desk to customers around the globe. Previously he was an Enterprise Systems Engineering Manager at Apple doing all kinds of fun things with lots of cool people and solving crazy problems to allow for integrating Macs and iOS devices into enterprise environments.

Prior to Apple Joel was frequently seen speaking at Macworld, WWDC and other conferences and gatherings of Apple-minded admins. Joel has traveled the world helping customers adopt OS X and in 2002 he setup afp548.com and had a lot of fun with that too. Joel is a classically trained journalist and plied his trade as a paparazzi chasing Monica Lewinsky before rising to become the Director of Photography for United Press International in Washington DC. If you’re lucky he’ll even tell you some of his Monica stories, as the stories are better than the photos.

To view archived presentation, click here.

Firmware Password Manager Update – by Todd McDaniel,  Marriott Library

Firmware Password Manager (FWPM) is our solution to the problem of managing firmware passwords on Apple computers. When we began on this project there were no solutions, besides setting the password and never changing it. FWPM allows you to update your firmware passwords quickly and easily.

In a nutshell, the firmware password in Apple computers prevents non-privileged users from booting from a foreign device. The firmware password is one of three interlocking methods used to secure Apple computers. The other two are: using strong passwords on user accounts and FileVault to apply full disk encryption (FDE). Strong account passwords are always the first line of defense. FDE effectively scrambles the information written a storage device and renders it unreadable by unauthorized persons. Using all three methods can make a computer unusable should it be lost or stolen.

This presentation will discuss a number of updates to FWPM, including a version specifically for JAMF Pro. We’ll also look new methods of deploying FWPM, options for deploying updated password files to your machines and how to integrate FWPM into your environment.

For more information about Firmware Password Manager (FWPM), see this web site:

https://github.com/univ-of-utah-marriott-library-apple/firmware_password_manager

To view archived presentation, click here.

Open Discussion

Questions, comments, problems and fixes.

Directions

Note, due to scheduling conflicts with our usual meeting location, we will be meeting at the Marriott Library room 1705A located inside the Faculty Center located north of Mom’s Cafe.

For directions to the University of Utah monthly Mac Managers Meetings see the following web page.

Archive & Live Presentation(s)

• A live broadcast of the presentations will be available from this web page.
• Archives of the presentations will be available from this web page.