Category: Uncategorized
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Using Santa to block an .app
Acknowledgements Special shoutout to @bur on the Mac Admins Slack for help with some command-line syntax. Santa can be complicated, but doesn’t need to be Google has a project on GitHub called Santa, which is quite powerful and complicated. As the project’s readme says, though: Documentation: This is currently limited.. I just wanted to do…
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If munkiimport doesn’t generate an installer_item_hash in the pkginfo file
If you notice that running munkiimport on a .dmg doesn’t result in an installer_item_hash generating, you might want to also run makepkginfo on that .dmg to double-check it’s read-only: makepkginfo /PATH/TO/REPO/pkgs/PROBLEMITEM.dmg WARNING: /PATH/TO/REPO/pkgs/PROBLEMITEM.dmg is a writable disk image. Checksum verification is not supported. WARNING: Consider converting /PATH/TO/REPO/pkgs/PROBLEMITEM.dmg to a read-only diskimage.
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“Grant access” problem when trying to open Word docs
If you’re trying to open a Word doc, and it keeps saying you don’t have permission (even when you own the document), asking you to grant access to the document, and then still not giving you access; then just quit out of Word completely, and then launch it up again. The document should open fine…
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Failing Adobe Acrobat DC updates
Usually when new Acrobat updates come out, I can have clients pull them off the Munki server and install those updates automatically. Randomly, some clients will error out: installer: The upgrade failed (The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.) installer:%42.031690 installer:PHASE:Preparing for installation… installer: Package…
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When DEP nag won’t work but Setup Assistant will to enroll in your MDM
Explanation Symptoms Workaround Automating Other Considerations Explanation The two-days-later update: after doing troubleshooting with our MDM, asking around to other Mac admins, Google searching, and creating an enterprise case with Apple, I finally got back a definitive answer from Apple, which is that this functionality is essentially broken in Sierra (10.12.6). They’re saying it should…
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MacBook Air keyboard backlight disabled with a “do not enter” sign
Acknowledgements: Hat tip to my colleague Jerold for stumbling upon this fix. We had a user come in with a MacBook Air whose keyboard backlight wouldn’t turn on. If you pressed the F5 or F6 key to turn it up or down, there would be on-screen feedback but instead of a indicator bar showing it…
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macOS client can’t download Apple updates
This is a really odd situation. I have one client machine that cannot download a particular Apple update. This is the error message that comes up: softwareupdate -d -a Software Update Tool Finding available software Error downloading Security Update 2017-002: The Internet connection appears to be offline. Done. Error downloading updates. Here are two things…
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What to do if Safari refuses to launch
So a user came in with Safari not able to launch. At first I thought perhaps the user account was corrupted, but I logged in as another user, and the issue persisted. Not launching and crashing. Just not launching at all. The dock icon didn’t even bounce. Running open /Applications/Safari.app resulted in an error of…
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Factory-resetting a disabled iOS device
A user came in with a disabled iPhone (too many password attempts) and couldn’t factory reset it. We tried to get it into DFU mode, but we couldn’t easily. Turns out, if you just plug it into a computer that has Apple Configurator 2 installed, you can use Configurator to restore the device (without having…
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askForPassword and askForPasswordDelay in macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
Update: Apparently 10.13.4 just breaks this completely (defaults write commands won’t do anything any more). Thanks to tristan on the MacAdmins Slack for pointing this out. In macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and earlier, you could go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Require password ________ after sleep or screen saver begins, and…
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Validate a FileVault recovery key using a .plist file
If you want to validate your FileVault recovery key from the terminal, you can do sudo fdesetup validaterecovery and then be prompted for the recovery key. But what if you want to use a .plist to validate the recovery key instead of getting prompted for the key? This is where it’s a bit counterintuitive. When…
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Troubleshooting faded-looking icons in Managed Software Center on 10.13 clients
Update: Apparently, a real fix for this is on the way. Acknowledgements: thanks to elios and bochoven on MacAdmins Slack for figuring out what was going on. If the icons in your Munki repo looked fine on your 10.12 and 10.11 clients, and then a few of them suddenly look sort of faded (for example,…
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LockDown Browser in iOS crashes immediately after launch
If LockDown Browser on your iPad opens and immediately crashes, the way to fix it is to uninstall and reinstall the app. Swiping away the app, updating the app, updating iOS, doing a home-power reset all do not fix this issue (at least not at the time of this writing).
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Importing custom .mobileconfig profiles into Mosyle MDM
Acknowledgements: Full credit to Tom Case on the MacAdmins Slack for this tip. It’s not immediately obvious that you can import custom .mobileconfig profiles into Mosyle MDM, but apparently you can if you go to Management > Certificates > (click on profile or add new one) > Select the file. Those can be any .mobileconfig…
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Printopia Pro and “login not accepted” message
If you use pycreateuserpkg to create a user or change its password, that will work great… except with Printopia Pro, which will prompt for a local admin username and password, and your local admin username and password will not work, and you’ll get a login not accepted error message instead. Deleting and re-adding the local…