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Oct
22

Caching Server - Disable iCloud Caching

An interesting new feature of Caching Server 5 is the ability to cache personal iCloud data.  There could be a variety of reasons why this may not be desirable in some environments, one of which could be concerns over storage capacity on the caching server.  Here is how to disable that feature using the serveradmin command in Terminal:

sudo serveradmin settings caching:AllowPersonalCaching = no

Change that boolean field to yes to re-enable this feature.

Oct
19

Prevent the Photos app in OS X from launching when plugging in an iOS device.

Prevent the Photos app in OS X from launching when plugging in an iOS device.

This sets an OS X flag so not activate ImageCapture,Photos or iPhoto when an iOS device is detected.

1. Launch Terminal from the /Applications/Utilities.

2. Enter the following command:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES

Oct
16

El Capitan - Setup Assistant Screen Capture

New in El Capitan is the ability to take screen captures of the setup assistant windows.  This is going to be very helpful when writing tutorials that involve the first boot setup assistant screens.

For each screen that you want to capture, press command > shift >3.  Upon login, all of the screenshots will be on the desktop.  

As a bonus, you can take a screen capture of the login window and it works the same way.  The next user that logs in will have the screen capture on their desktop.

Oct
01

Create an OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer.

There is a very simple way to create an OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer.
You need the full installer of OS X 10.11 El Capitan and a USB Drive (or something similar)
 
 
OS X 10.11 El Capitan has an executable file createinstallmedia to make a bootable usb.


Command to make an external OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer
This is assumes you have a an external partition named "YOURVOLUMENAMEHERE” (You should probably change your volume name)
Make changed where appropriate

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/YOURVOLUMENAMEHERE/ --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/ --nointeraction

2. Type in your password (Assuming you are an admin)
3. You will see the following:

Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

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.

Continue reading
Sep
13

Prevent Time Machine from prompting to use new hard drives as backup volume

defaults write com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool true

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