Tag: munki
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Some basics of DEPNotify and a sample script
If you’ve been doing Munki admin’ing for a short while, you’ve probably heard people talk about DEPNotify, whose README says is “a small light weight notification app that was designed to let your users know what’s going on during a DEP enrollment.” Aforementioned DEPNotify README is fairly comprehensive in terms of going over all the…
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Python script to list software available in a Munki repo
I created a small project (for fun) to list out software available in a Munki repo. It’s called MunkiItemsList. On a basic level, it looks for all the items that are listed in any optional installs manifest, and then lists out the display name, description, and highest version available. There are some additional options described…
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Python 3 script to add optional installs to the SelfServeManifest
Two years ago, I wrote a bash script that adds a bunch of optional installs to the SelfServeManifest using /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy, which is a fine tool, but it can get bit messy sometimes. I did play around with using /usr/local/munki/manifestutil, but it got a bit convoluted, and I figured “Hey, why not just write it in…
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Script to make Jamf Self Service policy install a Munki optional install
There is a huge project called jamJAR that seeks to integrate Munki and Jamf in a seamless way. I’ve written a script that does something a bit less ambitious, but it may still be helpful to your organization if you are “using” Jamf Self-Service, really want to be using Managed Software Center, and still want…
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Using a full macOS installer with Munki to patch macOS
Note about Silicon Macs This will not work with Apple Silicon Macs, as Apple now requires you to enter the password of a secure token user account in order to run startosinstall. Shoutout Shoutout to Rod Christiansen on the MacAdmins Slack for putting this strange (but still working for now) method of patching on my…
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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…
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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…
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Upping the logging level in Munki
As noted in the Troubleshooting section of the Munki wiki, you can increase the logging level for Munki clients. The default logging level is 1, which looks like this: Dec 12 2019 20:04:20 -0800 GoogleChrome version 79.0.3945.79 (or newer) is already installed. If you increase the logging level to 4, it will look like this:…
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Yes, Munki’s makecatalogs runs on Linux
You can’t run all of Munki‘s admin tools on Linux, because some of the things the tools use involve Mac-specific tools, which is why even Munki admins who host their Munki servers on a Linux server will use a Mac for things like munkiimport. You can, however, run makecatalogs on Linux, though. Here’s just a…
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Using AutoPkg to distribute and test Munki 4 (or any new Munki version) in prerelease
10 December, 2019 update: Munki 4 is now an official (not pre-) release, so the below instructions are for when the next version is in prerelease… 25 November, 2019 (original post) As of this writing, Munki 4 is in the late stages of testing (its current on release candidate 1), so if you want to…
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Forcing updates to Google Chrome using Chrome preferences / a Chrome profile
Why use Chrome relaunch notification instead of Munki I’m a huge fan of using Munki to patch software on macOS, but Munki is generally polite—it usually won’t kill an application while the user is using it. There is an option in Munki to force an install after a certain date, but that will log the…
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Setting up Reposado without downloading Apple update pkgs
Reposado allows you to set up your own local repo of Apple software updates. This can be handy if you want to control the flow of updates (having a testing branch, for example, and then promoting items from testing to production). With Apple deprecating custom catalog URLs in Catalina (they still work for now, though),…
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Munki hack: force uninstall after a certain date
Munki has an option to force install by a certain date (specifically, using the force_install_after_date key), but it doesn’t do a force uninstall after a certain date. You can make an item a managed uninstall, which means Munki will uninstall it when possible, but if that requires a logout or reboot, you don’t know when…
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Using Munki to ignore Catalina upgrade in macOS
Update: Apple has deprecated the –ignore flag, so this probably will never work again. Apple used to make you go out of your way to download an OS upgrade. Then, Apple started having those OS upgrade installers auto-download to the /Applications folder. Then Apple made it so OS upgrades appeared as regular updates. For Mac…
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MathType formulas shrink after editing and saving them in Microsoft Word
March 2019 Update: WIRIS has now announced a workaround for randomly resized equations. I don’t know for sure that that’s exactly the same problem as the shrinking formulas, but it could be. Definitely worth checking out if you’re experiencing this issue. One teacher had an issue in MathType that involved saved formulas in a Word…