Alan Siu's Blog

Category: Uncategorized

  • Unknown error 9 or 9006 for restoring an iPad

    If you get an unknown error when restoring an iPad to factory settings and you know your iTunes is up to date and you don’t have anything weird blocked on your firewall or web filter, it’s likely the cable you’re using. Apple has a full list of troubleshooting steps. Just keep in mind that you…

  • Thick imaging, thin imaging, and no imaging macOS

    Last year, Tech Republic published a quick rundown on three approaches to Mac deployment. Thought I’d do my quick take on it, based on my experiences. Thick Imaging Among the leading Mac admins out there (the ones giving workshops at conferences and on the tech panels and the primary contributors to widely used GitHub projects…

  • Changing client computer names using a Munki nopkg

    In Another opinionated guide to Munki manifests, I said one of the benefits of having no ClientIdentifier and using serial numbers as manifests was not having to manually change preferences on the machine if you repurpose it. What if you want the machine name to change, though? It used to be something like Basketball01, and…

  • Extracting Adobe CC icons for Munki

    Generally, Munki has no problems extracting icons from .app or .pkg items it imports. Adobe makes its installers a bit annoying to get icons out of, so when you import an Adobe CC item into Munki and try to get the icon out, you’ll get this instead: Attempt to create a product icon? [y/n] y…

  • Configuring Sendmail for Gmail on a WAMP server

    If you have a WAMP server and want to send email via PHP’s mail() function, a quick way to do so is with fake sendmail for Windows. Create a directory on your WAMP server for C:\usr\lib and put both the sendmail.exe and sendmail.ini files in there. Edit the sendmail.ini file as below (filling in your…

  • Fix “invalid node structure” error in macOS

    Note: If you’re getting this error on an OWC drive, it is hardware issue. If your drive is still under warranty, contact OWC about a replacement. One of our Macs got a filesystem error of “invalid node structure.” You can still mount the drive (if you want to get at the user data), but the…

  • Scripting manifest creation in Munki

    If you’re new to Munki, you probably have an entire fleet of Macs you have to manage. It could be hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. You’re not going to enroll those all by hand, are you? But please be intentional about how you structure things. Before you run off scripting, read Another opinionated guide…

  • Seashore breaks with Sierra; use GIMP (or Photoshop) instead

    For many years, GIMP didn’t have native macOS support (you needed X11 to make it work). Seashore wasn’t as fully featured as GIMP, but it was native. As of Sierra (macOS 10.12), Seashore just crashes when you try to launch it. R.I.P., Seashore. Fortunately, if you’re looking for a free alternative to Photoshop, GIMP is…

  • Another opinionated guide to Munki manifests

    Why this guide? The setup I would recommend What are the benefits of this approach? Bulk-creating manifests from serial numbers Switching to serial numbers from a different setup Subfolders for included manifests And then, going forward? Why this guide? When I first started using Munki, all the terminology was a bit overwhelming to me, even…

  • Set ShoreTel Communicator server name with a profile

    When you install ShoreTel Communicator’s Mac app, it launches up and asks you for a server name, username, and password. The username and password will be specific to each user, but the server name will likely be the same for everyone, at least at a small- or medium-sized organization. So if you have Mac clients…

  • Using a profile to re-enable Safari plugins

    Recently (not sure the exact date), Apple started disabling certain Safari plugins by default. That’s great for security, but it’s not that great for usability, especially if users actually want to use those plugins. If you want your users to enable plugins themselves manually, they can follow Apple’s instructions at How to use Internet plug-ins…

  • Freeing up licenses from deactivated users in CrashPlan

    If you have CrashPlan PROe licensed for a certain number of users at your organization, but then you run out of licenses, you may think you can just deactivate users, and that’s all good, but in Deactivating & Reactivating Users & Devices, Code42 is a little vague on how long it will take for the…

  • Setting up deferred FileVault encryption

    In Enabling FileVault Encryption for Client Macs, I mentioned that deferred enablement is one option for mass-deploying encryption to clients, with the major downside that you can enable it for only one user and not multiple users at once. If you do want to go that route, though, this is the command (assuming you’re using…

  • Printopia Pro unofficially supports macOS Sierra

    The last word Decisive Tactics has on Printopia Pro (as of this writing) is there were some fixes in June for issues in 10.7: Printopia Pro Release Notes Just in case anyone’s curious, I loaded Printopia Pro on a Mac running Sierra (10.12), and it’s running just fine. No official word from Decisive Tactics, but…