HCS Blog

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!

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.

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

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:

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:

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!