The Dummy Package is a technique for extending the capabilities of the Casper Suite. Read about the process in my article, “Extending the Casper Suite with Dummy Packages”, in the September issue of MacTech Magazine.
The United States National Security Agency has published a pamphlet titled Hardening Tips for the Default Installation of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.
In this series of articles, I’ll examine each of the tips in the NSA document, how to automate their implementation, and discuss any caveats for each.
Here’s another script for zero-touch deployment. If you want to enable Remote Management for Apple Remote Desktop access, this script will get you there.
This script uses the kickstart command which is buried within the ARDAgent application
This is a topic I’ve seen covered in many places, however most of the articles I see on this topic only get part of the solution or solve it in a way that creates unnecessary security issues. In light of this, I’ve decided to talk about what I consider to be the best practices on [...]
This post is in response to a reader request. Along with firmware updates, setting DVD region codes has long been considered one of those things that simply cannot be automated for sysadmins. There are methods to flash a drive’s firmware, making it region-free, but that’s at the same time of questionable legality and a manual [...]
Mac OS X provides a one-stop command for viewing and setting several OS configuration items. The systemsetup command is found at /usr/sbin/systemsetup. Running the command: man systemsetup in the Terminal application will return a full listing of the options available in this command. This script uses the systemsetup command to configure a target system to [...]
Continuing with the concept of automated server deployment, here is a small script that changes the serial number in a Mac OS X Sever installation. A server system that has been deployed via disk imaging or automated deployment systems will boot, but to use the server features, a valid and unique serial number must be [...]
Note: I realize that parts of this script extend beyond the viewable area. I am considering changes to the site formatting to prevent this in the future, but I have found that if you select the script text in Safari and copy it, the text beyond the viewable area will be captured. I was recently [...]
As of late, I have been tasked with managing Mac servers. Since a Mac server is really only slightly different than a Mac client, I use the same general methodologies and tools to manage them. My Xserve hardware standard includes three identical hard disks. What follows is a script intended to be used with the [...]
I’m always looking for ways to get to zero-touch deployment with less effort. In that vein, I threw together this script which can be deployed as an “at reboot” script in a Casper configuration. Using this prevents you from having to go into your base image and manually configure ssh. The script can also be [...]