February 2019 – MacAdmins Meeting

13 Feb February 2019 – MacAdmins Meeting

February 20th 2019 – University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting

The University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting is held monthly at the Marriott Library on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 11 AM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This month’s meeting will be held on Wed, February 20th 2019, 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 use the Contact Us option.

PC Recon Replacement – By Todd McDaniel, Univ of Utah, Marriott Library

With the end of Jamf’s support for Windows and recon.exe, our internal inventory lost an important component. Since we have a lot of experience implementing custom tools with the Jamf API, we decided to write a replacement for recon.exe ourselves using Python. In addition to support for Windows it could support implementing Linux inventory in Jamf Pro.

This talk will describe our tool, how it works, planned improvements and how you can help make it better!

Jamf deprecated the “Recon.exe” starting with v9.100.0, is no longer distributing Recon.exe and end support for “Recon.exe” at the end of 2017 and continue to offer technical support for existing “Recon.exe” customers until December 31, 2017. We notices issues with “Recon.exe” with v10.x Jamf Pro overwriting Windows specific inventory data with blank input and decided to develop our own replacement and have been collaborating with Jamf technical support.

• Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
• Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.

Mac Deploy Stick (MDS) – By Timothy Perfitt, Twocanoes Software

Mac Deploy Stick works with all Macs, including new Macs with Secure Boot and System Integrity Protection. Mac Deploy Stick sets up all the resources for booting from the recovery partition or an external drive, wiping and installing macOS, and installing require packages. It is the easiest, fastest way to deploy Macs. It allows you to quickly setup and provision Macs with Mac Deploy Stick. Within minutes of a Mac pulled out of the box, it will be setup, configured, and ready to deploy.

Mac Deploy Stick does not replace a client management system, but works seamlessly with it. Whether you are using Munki, Jamf Pro, or an MDM-based client management system, use Mac Deploy Stick to install the package that installs the client or enrolls the system.

If you are using the Apple Device Enrollment Program (DEP), Mac Deploy Stick can be used to quickly restore non-responsive systems with an automated workflow for re-installing macOS.

To further automate the process, Mac Deploy Stick can flash an Arduino to turn it into a Mac Deploy Stick Automaton, which gives the key strokes for automatically selecting the recovery partition and running the script. It uses Using an Arduino Micro to automatically perform the keystrokes for setting up the Mac.

Arduino Micro is the smallest board of the family, easy to integrate it in everyday objects to make them interactive. The Micro is based on the ATmega32U4 microcontroller featuring a built-in USB which makes the Micro recognisable as a mouse or keyboard.

This presentation will give introduction to the technology implemented and an overview of the Mac Deployment Stick and examples of usage & automation scenarios for Mac Admins.

About Timothy Perfitt
Timothy Perfitt is founder and CEO of Twocanoes Software, Inc and Twocanoes Labs, LLC. He started the company in 2012 in Naperville, IL in an effort to build best of breed Mac and iOS software and hardware. Taking advantage of Apple’s iBeacon and the excitement around close-proximity sensors, Twocanoes has created a short-range Bluetooth device that alerts customer-aware systems of a nearby mobile device called Bleu.

Prior to starting Twocanoes, Timothy worked for Apple for 10 years and developed the first ever certification training for OS X and OS X server, which led him to work with the Apple engineering team that focused on Higher Education and Fortune 500 large scale environments.

For more information see his about.me.

• Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
• Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.

Moving out of the Pool –  By Darren Wallace, dataJAR

At the end of January 2019, Adobe finally released details of their replacement for Device Pool and Serial Number licensing for Adobe CC 2019. In this presentation we will cover the changes, migration concerns and anything else that can reduce wasting time and pain (i.e. Faff) from moving from serial number to shared device based licensing like in a student lab environment.

About Darren Wallace
Darren has been tinkering with Macs on a professional level for more than 13 years, starting as a fresh-faced trainee engineer. Working at dataJAR, delivering and managing technical projects and support. He also spends time with his fellow Cat Hearders, running the London Apple Admins group.

• Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
• Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.

Getting Started with Apple School Manager –  By John Daley, Apple

About John Daley
John Daley is an Apple Field Engineer serving Higher Education in the Mountain West.

WARNING
No Live Broadcast or Archive will be available of this presentation due to Apple policies. You must attend in person to see this presentation.

Open Discussion

Questions, comments, problems and fixes.

Directions

The meeting will be held 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.