Alan Siu's Blog

Tag: munki

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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),…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Activating Geometer’s Sketchpad in macOS 10.13.6 (and beyond?)

    The officially sanctioned way to license GSP5 for Macs was still working even as of 10.13.5. It certainly was working in 10.12. Unfortunately, with 10.13.6—unless you had an already activated GSP when you upgraded to 10.13.6 from 10.13.5 or earlier—you might get error messages like usage: Sketchpad_Executable -license (register | deregister) -name LicenseName -code AuthorizationCode…

  • Integrating DetectX Swift with Munki

    If you like DetectX Swift and want to integrate it with Munki, this is how I did it. Hat tip to Zack McCauley for doing the heavy lifting, which I’m now building on. I’d recommend you read his blog post first. So instead of having an Outset script or separate Launch Agent, I decided to…

  • Considerations when upgrading CrashPlan with Munki

    I had a great workflow for installing CrashPlan with Munki for older versions of CrashPlan (we were on versions 3 and 4 before). We recently made the jump to CrashPlan 6.5, though, and that workflow no longer applies. Now you have to use a deploy.properties file instead of custom.properties and userInfo.sh files. We had some…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • Can’t change Safari homepage in Sierra, even with no profiles managing homepage

    So I came across something weird that’s affected only my 10.12.4 clients (none of my 10.11.6 clients seem to be affected by this). Even though I have only one Safari profile enabled, which is set-once and doesn’t manage the homepage, my 10.12.4 clients are unable to change the homepage in Safari manually. Whatever the homepage…

  • Using startosinstall to install a macOS upgrade with Munki

    Update: The instructions below will be obsolete once Munki 3 is released. More details on the Munki 3 implementation can be found on the Munki wiki. createOSXinstallPkg is a great project for making an Apple macOS installer into a .pkg you can deploy with Munki. Apple did some things to break that process for 10.12.4.…

  • Automating an AutoPkg Munki import when vendors don’t package installers properly

    You may have, when using (or creating) a .munki AutoPkg recipe, come across a situation in which you run it: autopkg run -v NAMEOFITEM.munki and then get something back like this: Item NAMEOFITEM already exists in the munki repo as OLDNAMEOFITEM. even though you’re sure the item is newer than the one in the Munki…