Category: Uncategorized
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Office 2016 changes for Munki and AutoPkg
Sources and Further Reading Demystify Office 2016 for Mac is a super-comprehensive breakdown of the changes in Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac. It was a bit too comprehensive for me. I kind of wanted just a bottom line, which the autopkg-discuss mailing list helped me with, and which I’ll summarize below. General Gist of Procedure…
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Updating Mac laptop carts with closed lids
What’s the problem? So Mac laptops have this thing where they sleep when their lids are shut. That’s how Apple designed them. That’s how they work. Most of the time, that’s fine. However, if you administer laptop carts for a school, that can definitely get in the way of keeping them updated. Even if you…
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Logic Pro error: Audio file does not have sufficient access privileges. An overview cannot be saved.
If you’re getting Audio file does not have sufficient access privileges. An overview cannot be saved. when opening up Logic Pro X projects, this is what you have to do: Go to File > Project Settings > Assets. Check all the boxes! Save the project, close it, and then re-open it, and you shouldn’t get…
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MonoDevelop crashing on your Mac for non-admins?
Update: This seems to be fixed in the newest (as of this writing, 5.3.1f1) version of Unity. If you use Unity3D and have experienced crashes launching up MonoDevelop, you may need to be an admin user. Or, if you are non-admin user, you may need to change the permissions to basically be writable by everyone…
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Using “current selection” of students in PowerSchool custom pages
I didn’t come up with this one on my own (big shout-out to Roger from the PowerSource forums), but I wanted to document how you use a “current selection” of students in the PowerSchool custom page: ~[tlist_sql; SELECT st.dcid, st.last_name, st.first_name, st.grade_level FROM Students st INNER JOIN ~[temp.table.current.selection:students] stusel ON stusel.dcid = st.dcid ]<div class=”photo_box”>…
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Using Munki to make sure Macs have a recovery partition
If you’re using Munki and you have Macs you want recovery partitions on (they’re on there by default, but you may have accidentally deleted a recovery partition by reformatting the entire drive instead of just the main partition), here’s one way you can approach it. First, definitely use Create Recovery Partition Installer to create the…
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Install Windows dual-boot to Mac Pro using OWC SSD
Usually setting up a dual-boot for Windows on a Mac is a fairly straightforward procedure—use Boot Camp Assistant to create the USB installer and then have Boot Camp Assistant help you set up the partitions and install Windows. We ran across a rather odd scenario with some Mac Pros, whose internal storage we’d upgraded from…
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Filling out a Google Form from the terminal using the curl command
Cheating a bit here by just linking to someone else’s blog post, but it’s very well written, with screenshots and different colors. Why reinvent the wheel? Here it is: Submit Google Forms By Curl Command
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Disabling blocking applications for a Munki package
I was having a weird issue with CrashPlan, in which Munki was blocking CrashPlan from uninstalling because CrashPlan.app was supposedly running (the actual app wasn’t running‐just a CrashPlan-initiated launch daemon). Unfortunately, I didn’t actually read the documentation on blocking applications, because there is, in fact, a different between not specifying a blocking application and specifying…
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The iPad could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9).
We’ve come across a couple of iPads that give you an error 9 when you try to restore them to factory settings, usually after the iPad gets disabled or has some other funky state that cannot be recovered. Apple has its own official help page for errors, but we didn’t find that much use (no,…
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Using duti to script default applications for Macs
Back story It was surprisingly difficult for me to find a straightforward tutorial on how to script changing the default applications for Macs. There are great screenshot-laden tutorials on how to change default applications the point-and-click way for one user (right-click the file, Get Info, Open With, select application, Change All, Continue). And then there…
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Importing applications into Munki that have incorrect or no version numbers
Generally doing a munkiimport on a .app or .pkg to get it into a Munki repository will tend to just work. Munki will automatically create the appropriate .plist file and know whether an app is installed or not based on the receipts or based on an installs array (more details at How Munki Decides What…
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Getting GPA methods into a PowerSchool custom page that uses tlist_sql
Acknowledgements: the actual genius of this workaround approach (including the important snippets of code) is from Adam L. on the PowerSource forums (you can search the forums for a thread entitled “tlist_sql and GPA methods”). I find ~[tlist_sql] handy for doing reports out of PowerSchool, because it’s transparent (someone can look directly at the page…
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Allowing non-admin Mac users to resume printers
Apparently, more recent versions of CUPS do not allow by default for non-admin users to resume a printer. I’m not sure the logic behind this. Disabling? Activating? Sure. Non-admins don’t need to do those things. Why shouldn’t a non-admin resume a print job, though? Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s had this issue. Thanks…
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Forcing a Chrome homepage on Macs
Nick McSpadden has a great (and thorough) write-up on Deploying and Managing Google Chrome: The Rough Guide, and his recommendation is to have some initial Master Preferences that set a default, which can be overriden. In some cases, though (for example, we have some machines that will be used for Hour of Code next week…