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Problem-solving by Apple Certified Professionals

As the Chief Technology Officer of HCS Technology Group, Adam is a practical decision maker who oversees the technical direction of the company. In working with executive management, Adam oversees the technical competency of all HCS consultants and helps keep HCS and its consultants on the cutting edge of new and emerging technologies. Adam also leads up the Apple Professional Services division of HCS Technology Group

As an industry consultant since 2002, Adam has specialized in OS X and OS X server deployment, integration, management, and security since version 10.1, and iOS deployment, integration, and management since its’ inception. Adam has worked with home-based clients, small to medium business clients, enterprise clients, and K-8, K-12, and Higher Education clients. Adam heads up the Chicago division of HCS Technology Group, participating in all aspects of business development, operations, and client relations. Adam believes in doing whatever it takes to build personal relationships, communicate effectively, and make a customer happy for the long term. He is proficient in IT consulting engagement, leadership and strategic planning, project management, training, troubleshooting, implementation, and life cycle management.

He became an Apple Certified Trainer in 2003 teaching around 30 classes a year between 2005 and 2011, and currently serves as a mentor trainer who teaches Train-The-Trainer (T3) courses for Apple, Inc. in Cupertino, CA. Adam does a myriad of work for Apple Professional Services for Education, and travels throughout the United States performing these engagements on behalf of Apple, Inc.

Oct
27

Changing the OS X mail server maximum email attachment size

OS X Server includes a very robust mail server, that while not widely used by the IT community, uses tried-and-true open source software (dovecot and postfix) for POP, IMAP, and SMTP services. However, the Server app interface does leave many configurable options out of the user interface, and one important one is the maximum e-mail attachment size for your message. So, if you need to change it, you need to know the size in bytes. There are many megabyte to byte calculators on the internet.

First, find out the current maximum attachment size.

postconf | grep message_size_limit

This should return 10 MB in bytes, which is

message_size_limit = 10240000

Use postconf to change this. In this case, I am changing it to 50 MB

postconf -e message_size_limit=52428800

And finally, reload postfix

sudo postfix reload

You're done!

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Sep
08

Odd results after conversion of codes to managed distribution licenses

Many organizations are moving to a MDM server for both shared use and one to one iOS devices. If you plan on assigning organization-owned apps to those devices, you will need to be a member of Apple's Volume Purchase Program and purchase both zero cost and paid apps from the VPP store, selecting managed distribtuion as your license type. Organizations that had previously purchased VPP apps with redemption codes that were largely used for Apple Configurator-based deployments need to request migration as per the instructions in Apple's support article https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202863.

If, after migration, apps appear as only numbers with "B2B" next to them and you do not have any enterprise-owned apps in your distribtuion list, the cause is likely that the app is no longer available in the (iOS/iTunes) App store.

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May
27

Obtaining System Information reports from the Command Line

System Information, and the plethora of information about your Mac computer that you can obtain from it, can also be accessed from the command line using the system_profiler command. By default, it outputs all information directly to the screen, so you may want to redirect the stdout to a file.

system_profiler > /Users/your-account-name/Desktop/report.txt

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Mar
09

Apple Configurator is DEP aware

Since version 1.6, Apple Configurator has been DEP aware. Prior to this version, if you used Apple Configurator to update he iOS en-masse on a group of iOS devices, it would activate the devices irregardless of their DEP status. With version 1.6 and newer, if your device is in Apple's Device Enrollment Program and associated with a MDM server in your DEP portal, Apple Configurator will update the iOS but will not activate the device.

As you can see, upon initial inspection, it appears something went wrong. However, if you dig a bit deper:

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Nov
17

Exporting Users and Groups in OS X Server for Yosemite

With Workgroup Manager's departure in OS X Server for Yosemite, administrators are left without a GUI-based way to export users and groups out of Open Directory. While Workgroup Manager contained funcitons for both importing and exporting records, the Server app only has the ability to import records from properly formatted files (like the files that Workgroup Manager would generate). Thankfully, we have a full suite of "ds" commands on the command line to generate the files for us.

For Users:

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Nov
17

createinstallmedia a one-time thing in Yosemite

It is well documented in Apple Support articles, the OS X Support Essentials Book, and on other sites about using the createinstallmedia command to make a full OS X Install disk. However, with Yosemite, while the command still exists and using the disk you created for an install works the first time, an issue seems to occur on older Macs (non-retina, circa 2012 and older) on subsequent installs.

The OS X Installer's standard operating procedure is to create/update the recovery partition and then restart into the recovery partition. However, on subsequent installs with a Yosemite-created full OS X Install disk, the recovery partition is not created or updated on older Macs. The installer also looks different, a customize button exists, and you able to turn off the installer components!

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