Categories
Mac admin'ing

T2 Macs don’t count as external boot media

I don’t see this documented anywhere in an officially explicit way, so I’m writing a blog post on this. With the introduction of T2-chip Macs, Apple introduced something called Startup Security Utility, and the official line there is that you can change the setting to “Allow booting from external media,” and then you can boot from “an external hard drive, thumb drive, or other external media.”

What the official knowledgebase article doesn’t tell you is that (again, just based on my own testing—if someone has official Apple documentation laying this out in a clear way, please comment below, and I’ll amend this post with a link to the official explanation) is that a T2-chip Mac does not count as “an external hard drive, thumb drive, or other external media.”

So, here’s what I’ve found based on my testing, if you change the Startup Security Utility settings to be as lax as possible:

  • You can target disk mode boot a T1 Mac to a T2 Mac.
  • You can target disk mode boot a T1 Mac to another T1 Mac.
  • You probably cannot target disk boot a T2 Mac to a T1 Mac… I’ve tried this with several machines of varying models, and sometimes it works; other times it doesn’t. I would probably err on the side of assuming it won’t work.
  • You cannot target disk mode boot a T2 Mac to another Mac.

And by “target disk mode boot,” I mean actually booting one Mac from another Mac, not mounting another Mac as an external drive inside an already booted Mac.

What’s been your experience? Are there tricks to get this to work that I’m not seeing?

If you know this to be true, is there official Apple documentation that lays this out clearly?

Categories
Mac admin'ing

If you update an AutoPkg parent recipe, but your override is still using old settings…

AutoPkg has a cool feature called parent trust that allows you to create recipe overrides that store a hash of the parent recipe (instead of running the parent recipe directly), and then prevent you from running the recipe if there’s a change to the parent recipe, until you update the trust info. (I also have a script that runs a list of recipes, checks trust info, and prompts you to approve changes if there are changes.)

But you may sometimes run into a situation in which you see the changes, the changes are important (for example, the download URL has changed to a new URL), but even after you accept the changes and update the trust info in your override recipe, the recipe still keeps using the old URL.

Here’s an example: AndroidStudio SEARCH_PATTERN error.

So if you make an override for AndroidStudio: autopkg make-override AndroidStudio.munki, you should see something like this:
   <key>Input</key>
   <dict>
      <key>MUNKI_REPO_SUBDIR</key>
      <string>apps/android</string>
      <key>NAME</key>
      <string>AndroidStudio</string>
      <key>SEARCH_PATTERN</key>
      <string>(https\://redirector\.gvt1\.com/edgedl/android/studio/install/.+/android-studio-ide.+\.dmg)</string>
      <key>SEARCH_URL</key>
      <string>https://developer.android.com/studio</string>
      <key>VERSION_SEARCH_PATTERN</key>
      <string>https\://redirector\.gvt1\.com/edgedl/android/studio/install/([0-9.]+)/android-studio-ide.+\.dmg</string>
      <key>VERSION_SEARCH_URL</key>
      <string>https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html</string>
Those input variables are copied over from the parent recipe. But then if the parent recipe updates SEARCH_URL to be a different URL, your override will still have the old value for SEARCH_URL.

So if you see a change to a parent recipe, and your override still seems to be using the old values, check your override for input variables, and delete the ones you don't want to override.

Categories
Mac admin'ing

Force-stopping the MunkiStatus progress bar at the login window

Sometimes, the MunkiStatus progress bar over the login window can get stuck, and pressing the Stop button can take a while to halt the progress bar completely.

To kill it immediately, press Cmd-Option-Shift-Escape (this is a slight modification of the usual force-quite key combination, which is Cmd-Option-Escape).

Full credit to Yehuda Bialik and Greg Neagle for this tip. The Wiki on Bootstrapping With Munki is now updated also to include a note this keyboard shortcut.

Categories
Mac admin'ing

Using AppleScript to install macOS software updates via System Preferences

Right now, this is a bit more of a proof-of-concept, but since /usr/sbin/softwareupdate has become increasingly unreliable in the past year for automating and enforcing Apple software updates, having a way to automate installing updates through the GUI on certain relatively unattended Macs is worth exploring. I’ve created a GitHub project for that called Sys Pref Software Updates (or spsu, for short).

Categories
Mac admin'ing

A way to install macOS Catalina guest on VirtualBox on a Mac host

Why this blog post?

I won’t say this is the way to install macOS Catalina on VirtualBox, but it’s certainly a way, and it’s difficult to find information about a way to do it. There are a lot of posts indicating that 10.15 or 10.15.1 worked but 10.15.2 and beyond don’t. Or that there are difficulties with VirtualBox and APFS. There are also, if you look for blog posts about macOS guests, many blog posts about Apple-unsanctioned “hackintosh” setups on Windows or Linux hosts.

So there may be a way easier way to set up Catalina as a guest on a Mac host, but at least this is something (happy to link to better tutorials if people post them).

Install macOS High Sierra

I did a modified version of How to Install macOS High Sierra in VirtualBox on Windows 10 to get High Sierra installed on VirtualBox. These are the key parts:

Creating the .iso

hdiutil create -o /tmp/HighSierra.cdr -size 7316m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach /tmp/HighSierra.cdr.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build
asr restore -source /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/install_build -noprompt -noverify -erase
hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System
hdiutil convert /tmp/HighSierra.cdr.dmg -format UDTO -o /tmp/HighSierra.iso
mv /tmp/HighSierra.iso.cdr ~/Desktop/HighSierra.iso

Creating the VM

Call the VM macOS (the tutorial says to use High Sierra, but we’ll be upgrading this later). Use two processors and 128 MB of video memory. Add the .iso to the optical drive part of storage.

Configuring the VM

Run these commands:
VBoxManage.exe modifyvm "macOS" --cpuidset 00000001 000306a9 04100800 7fbae3ff bfebfbff
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemProduct" "MacBookPro11,3"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemVersion" "1.0"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiBoardProduct" "Mac-2BD1B31983FE1663"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" "VBoxInternal/Devices/smc/0/Config/DeviceKey" "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" "VBoxInternal/Devices/smc/0/Config/GetKeyFromRealSMC" 1

Installing High Sierra

The tutorial mentions having to deal with the EFI Internal Shell. You shouldn’t have to. Installing High Sierra at this point with HFS+ (not APFS) should work.

Upgrading to Catalina

Once you’ve booted up to Setup Assistant and answered all the questions, you should be logged in and able to go to the Mac App Store to download and install the macOS Catalina upgrade.

Booting to recovery mode

I didn’t find Cmd-R to be a very reliable way to boot to recovery mode. And Rich Trouton’s trick to booting to recovery mode using VMWare doesn’t really apply to VirtualBox.

Another blog post (How to boot into recovery mode on mac without holding Command + R Key on keyboard ?) did have the solution, though. Just run
sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused"
and then reboot. That will do a one-time boot to recovery mode. Then when you reboot again, it should boot back to regular mode.

Enabling FileVault… sort of

If you want to enable FileVault, you’ll have to do so from the command-line (it’ll be greyed out in the GUI), but FileVault will basically be unusable (unless you just want to test in recovery mode):
sudo fdesetup enable
Don’t do this unless you already have your VM snapshotted or backed up. It will likely make your VM unbootable.

Changing the serial number

By default, the macOS VirtualBox guest serial number is 0, but you can change it (make sure the VM is powered off first). h/t to Utsav Dusad on Superuser.com:
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial "ACTUALSERIALNUMBER"

Categories
Mac admin'ing

What can you do at the password prompt in Catalina’s recovery mode?

The mysterious password prompt

Starting in macOS 10.15 (Catalina), Apple started requiring a password to do anything useful after booting into recovery mode:


It’s not exactly clear what this password is for. T2-chip Macs have hardware-based encryption, and that encryption is able to turn on instantaneously. Without mounting the encrypted drive, you can’t really reset a password or have access to the data on the drive. This prompt just seems like a rather odd choice, especially since it appears to act as almost some kind of firmware lock… except it’s not.

Option 1: Erase without password or recovery key

If you don’t know the password to a user account and also don’t know the recovery key to FileVault, you can still use recovery mode to erase the current installation and reinstall macOS. Yes, that’s that menu item hidden in the top-left corner.


You can just click Recovery Assistant and then select Erase Mac….

You’ll then be prompted to join a wireless network, and then some kind of Internet recovery is downloaded and booted to, and then you’ll be back at recovery mode with a prompt to activate your Mac, and then with the opportunity to reinstall macOS on the freshly wiped drive.

Option 2: Use FileVault recovery key with no password

But let’s say you don’t want to wipe the drive necessarily—you just want to do other recovery mode stuff, and you don’t know any user passwords. Well, you can click Forgot all passwords?

Then you can enter the FileVault recovery key for the drive.

Option 3: User FileVault-enabled user password

And if you do know a user password, of course, you can select the user, and then enter a password when prompted.

The only odd thing about that is it doesn’t actually get you past FileVault encryption.

That’s right. Even though you’ve entered a user password, if you want to mount the Macintosh HD – Data partition, you’ll still be prompted for a FileVault-enabled user’s password again.

Categories
Other Computer Stuff

Changing ownership of files in Google Drive via Google Apps Script

This was a fun little exercise in Google Apps Script to essentially transfer ownership of Google Drive files from one user to another.

Here’s a script that the old user should run to change ownership of those files to the new user:
ChangeFileFolderOwnership.js

And here’s a script that the new user user should run to remove the old user as editor from the newly changed-ownership files:
RemoveEditorFromDriveFiles.js

Note: You cannot use the file.removeEditor() command to remove yourself as an editor, so that actually has to be run from the new owner’s account.

Another Note: Just as when you change ownership or add editorship manually, scripting will also produce a ton of emails to the new editor/owner that you’ve add that person, so the new editor/owner may want to set up some temporary Gmail filters to mark those as read and put into the trash.

Categories
Mac admin'ing

Fixing Jamf device signature error

Even though this Jamf Nation thread is five years old, as of this writing, it’s still got the solution to the Device Signature Error - A valid device signature is required to perform the action error message.

In my experience, the actual working solution is to run sudo jamf enroll -prompt and then enter credentials when prompted. Repeatedly running sudo jamf recon (even after a reboot) or sudo jamf policy doesn’t fix the issue, nor does verifying that the system clock time is correct.

Now why this comes up in the first place on a freshly factory-reset computer that DEP-enrolled in Jamf—who knows but Jamf?

Categories
Mac admin'ing

Running commands as a user when scripting for Munki or Jamf

Munki and Jamf run as root, so scripts they execute execute as root, not user.

One great way around this is to use Outset‘s login scripts (login-once, login-every), but sometimes you may have occasion to actually run a script immediately as the logged-in user.

Obviously, you’ll want to get the currently logged-in user into a variable you can use—several methods for that are described in How To: Get the currently logged in user, in a more Apple approved way—and you’ll want to watch out for the “logged in user” being _mbsetupuser, root, or just blank.

Then, you can use su to substitute a user identity:
/usr/bin/su -l "$loggedInUser" -c "commandyouwanttorunastheuser"

This is kind of a hack, so whether you’re using this as a postinstall_script in a Munki nopkg or a script that a Jamf policy is calling, you’ll definitely want to thoroughly test it to make sure it does what you want it to do

Categories
Mac admin'ing

Using a Munki nopkg to disable Chrome 80’s ScrollToTextFragment feature

Update, 14 July 2020

With Chrome 84, Google has now removed the ability to disable the ScrollToTextFragment feature, so this whole write-up is now obsolete

What is ScrollToTextFragment

With Chrome 80, Google has introduced a new ScrollToTextFragment feature that allows you to reference an anchor link by any phrase that’s in a webpage, even if the author of the page hasn’t created an anchor link.

You can see this setting by going to chrome://flags in your Chrome browser (assuming you’re using version 80+).


By default, Chrome 80 has the setting enabled.


And, for example, you can create a direct link to the Recent Posts part of my blog by just appending #:~:text=Recent%20Posts to the end of the website URL.


If you disable this setting, however, the regular old webpage behavior returns.


So visiting the URL with that appended part will do nothing but show you the top of the webpage.

Why might you want to disable ScrollToTextFragment?

David Bokan (from Chromium, the open source project Chrome is based on) wrote up a Google Doc called Scroll-to-text Fragment Navigation – Security Issues (PUBLIC) that explains some potential issues.

How can I automate disabling ScrollToTextFragment?

Well, as of this writing (March, 2020), there doesn’t appear to be a way you can disable this via policy, so the best way I’ve come across to do so is via script. It’s a bit convoluted, but it works—here’s my Munki nopkg for disabling ScrollToTextFragment.

Because changing that setting requires a relaunch of Chrome, the nopkg has GoogleChrome as a blocking application, which means if you want to enforce this, you may have to add a force_install_after_date key to the pkginfo, because the chances that your users will see a pending Managed Software Center update, quit of Chrome, install the update, and then launch up Chrome again are probably fairly low.