08 Jan January 2020 – MacAdmins Meeting
January 15th, 2020 – 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, January 15th, 2020, 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.
What’s New – By Todd McDaniel, Univ of Utah, Marriott Library
This presentation will cover new information pertaining to Apple administration including operating system & application updates, security, hardware support & how-tos and other notables.
- Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
- Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.
eGPU Student Project – By O’Ryan Hampton, Univ of Utah, Marriott Library
An eGPU, short for “External Graphics Processing Unit” which is an idea that has been floating around for years, and in the R&D departments of video card manufacturers for even longer. The general concept involves hooking up a regular laptop to an external graphics card through a single cable, which can then take all of the load off your laptop’s internal GPU and put it on the more powerful extension instead. Apple officially rolled out eGPU support in macOS with the release of macOS 10.13.4. eGPUs requires a Thunderbolt 3 connection to work with Macs, meaning only Thunderbolt 3-enabled Macs are eligible. macOS only supports AMD GPUs, like the AMD Radeon Pro RX 5700 XT or AMD Radeon WX 9100, yet there was one glaring omission with the release — a lack of NVIDIA support. macOS Mojave dropped support for new Nvidia graphics drivers, except for a couple of chipsets included in still-supported Apple laptops. It is rumored that there is historical “bad blood” between Apple and NVIDIA that hasn’t been resolved that prevents driver support on macOS. Several eGPU chassis/card combinations are officially recommended by Apple.
This presentation will outline our departments’ student eGPU project, details on eGPU enclosure, GPU cards, macOS version compatibility, examples application benchmarks with eGPU vs no eGPU.
- Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
- Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.
Oracle Java Licensing – By Brad Millett, Univ of Utah, UIT
Java is a programming language and cross-platform runtime environment commonly leveraged in both front and back end IT applications and services. Oracle historically released and supported Java under a license that made it free to use. In 2017 Oracle announced changes to it’s Java licensing and support model and in January 2019 Oracle provided the last free public update/patch-set for Java. As new security and maintenance patches are released, existing Oracle Java installations must either remain vulnerable (i.e. not apply patches), migrate to a new Java installation, or purchase a Java Support Subscription to legally apply any new patches from Oracle. 
All vendors provided and in-house developed software deployed anywhere at the University of Utah requiring Java will need to be individually assessed and will likely be affected. Both server-side and client-side software and tools are individually in scope. This presentation will outline and discuss Java Licensing changes, impact & options.
Due to campus issues network/service issues, Brad Millett had to cancel his presentation. Richard Glaser did a quick ad hoc presentation with video/slides linked below.
- Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
- Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.
Mac Threat Landscape – By Thomas Reed, Malwarebytes
Malwarebytes for Mac has been collecting anonymized threat telemetry for 2019. We will take a look at what that data shows about recent Mac threats. We will also take a closer look at the behaviors of new threats that have appeared.
About Thomas Reed
Thomas Reed has been using Macs since 1984. He is a self-taught security researcher and Director of Mac & Mobile at Malwarebytes. In his spare time, he is an avid photographer.
- Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
- Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.
Jamf Interaction Toolkit – By David Ramirez
Jamf Interaction Toolkit, commonly known as UEX, is an open-source project that was built with a few goals in mind to setup software deployments that are branded and trusted, consistent across the enterprise, notify the user when applications need to be quit or to not be opened, notify the user when the computer needs to be restarted, allow the user to postpone the action based on number of times instead of an end date. 
All of this has to be compatible with Jamf Pro and works tandem with Self Service. Over time this tool has grown into a full set of versatile scripts that can essentially be used as your primary method for creating policies. This presentation will give an overview of the Jamf Interaction Toolkit (UEX), setup and implementation and answer questions about it.
About David Ramirez
David has been working with Jamf managed systems for 8 years. For the last 6 years, he’s worked as a Jamf Admin at a large fortune 500 company. Self-taught in scripting with a passion for finding a way to make the management experience better for our users, David is now a Senior Manager on the device management team for all things macOS and Jamf. His team consults with all areas of IT to share how Jamf management and user-centric thinking can enhance their product and make the experience for his company’s employees the best possible.
- Video – To view archived presentation video, click here.
- Slides – To view the presentation slides, click here.
Open Discussion
Questions, comments, problems and fixes.
Oracle Java Licensing Discussion
- Finding Java on your Mac Systems
To scan your Mac client systems to discover Java and applications bundling Java (i.e. JRE, JDK, etc.) with the application.
find . -name "java" -type f -exec ls -s {} \; -exec {} -version \; -exec echo "" \; -
Example Applications that Bundle Java
Adobe Animate CC 2018
Adobe CC/Adobe Animate CC 2018/Adobe Animate CC 2018.app/Contents/jre/jre1.8.0_121.jre/Contents/Home/bin/java
java version “1.8.0_121”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_121-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.121-b13, mixed mode)Mathematica
Mathematica.app/Contents/SystemFiles/Java/MacOSX-x86-64/bin/java
java version “1.8.0_161”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_161-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.161-b12, mixed mode)MATLAB_R2019a
MATLAB_R2019a.app/sys/java/jre/maci64/jre/bin/java
java version “1.8.0_181”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_181-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.181-b13, mixed mode)SPSS
SPSS/jre/bin/java
java version “1.8.0_51”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_51-b16)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.51-b03, mixed mode)Stata
Stata/utilities/java/macosx-x64/jre1.8.0_31/bin/java
java version “1.8.0_31”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_31-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.31-b07, mixed mode) - Identifying Vendors of Installed Java
You can find the Java vendor by using the following script posted by Rich Trouton or if you are using Jamf Pro creates an extension attribute to actively find the Java on your managed Mac client systems
#!/bin/bash jdk_installed=$(/usr/libexec/java_home 2>/dev/null) result=None if [[ -n "$jdk_installed" ]]; then # If an installed JDK is detected, check to see if it's from a known vendor. javaJDKVendor=$(defaults read "${jdk_installed%/*}/Info" CFBundleIdentifier | grep -Eo "adoptopenjdk|amazon|apple|azul|openjdk|oracle|sap" | head -1) if [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "adoptopenjdk" ]]; then result="AdoptOpenJDK" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "amazon" ]]; then result="Amazon" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "apple" ]]; then result="Apple" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "azul" ]]; then result="Azul" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "openjdk" ]]; then result="OpenJDK" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "oracle" ]]; then result="Oracle" elif [[ "$javaJDKVendor" = "sap" ]]; then result="SAP" else result="Unknown" fi fi echo "<result>$result</result>" exit 0
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.
No Comments