Tag: troubleshooting

  • If you can log in and use sudo but can’t unlock Sys Pref prefpanes in Big Sur

    I and at least one other person on the MacAdmins Slack saw situations in which a known working password (can log into the computer, can use sudo to escalate privileges in the terminal) on an admin account is not working in System Preferences to unlock a prefpane. Special thanks to owen on the MacAdmins Slack […]

  • Fix for VirtualBox Extension Pack postinstall script hanging in Munki

    The problem If you’ve been running the VirtualBoxExtPack.munki.recipe AutoPkg recipe, and you’ve noticed the VirtualBox Extension Pack postinstall script in Munki hanging indefinitely (30 minutes and beyond), it’s because the license hash has changed. The fix According to @jessepeterson (the maintainer of that AutoPkg recipe), the license hash doesn’t change very often, but it did […]

  • If Jamf recon is launching a du process that causes a CPU spike

    If Jamf inventory (jamf recon) causes an extended CPU spike specifically related to the du command, you can fix that by going, in the Jamf settings, to Computer Management > Computer Management – Management Framework > Inventory Collection, and then uncheck the Include home directory sizes checkbox. That is a system-wide setting, but especially if […]

  • Fixing DEPNotify GUI not launching with keyPath error

    I’m not sure how my computer got into this funky state, but I was playing around with a DEPNotify script, and after a while, I was suddenly getting these errors every time I tried to run it: DEPNotify[12422:409983] Failed to set (keyPath) user defined inspected property on (DEPNotify.WindowController): [ setValue:forUndefinedKey:]: this class is not key […]

  • If your VMWare guest macOS loses network connectivity

    If you haven’t changed any settings, and suddenly the Internet connection on your VMWare guest macOS installation goes out, and shutting down the VM or rebooting the VM doesn’t help, try rebooting the host Mac. That will likely fix the problem (not sure why that problem comes up in the first place.

  • AutoPkg failed: hdiutil: attach failed – no mountable file systems error

    If, when running AutoPkg, you get an error like failed: hdiutil: attach failed – no mountable file systems but you’re able to mount the .dmg manually (i.e., it’s not a corrupted download), double-check you don’t have a restrictions profile installed that requires you to authenticate when mounting disk images. That setting is pretty much useless […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • Fix for custom user icons freezing up System Preferences

    Even though there is some flexibility in terms of what sizes and resolutions you can use for custom user icons (to select for user pictures), if your icon’s resolution is way off, you may see a frozen blank, grey screen when trying to change the picture from that too-high-res picture to something else: To get […]