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Forcing XProtect blacklist updates on Mavericks and Yosemite
One of the changes Apple made between Mountain Lion and Mavericks was how XProtect was updated. On 10.6.x – 10.8.x, Apple used /usr/libexec/XProtectUpdater to update XProtect’s blacklist. If you needed...
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Ten Things You Might Not Know About FileVault 2
One of the changes that Steve Jobs briefly mentioned in the course of the WWDC 2011 keynote address was that Apple had revamped its FileVault encryption solution for Mac OS X 10.7.x, changing it from...
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Performing password resets on Yosemite with unsetpassword
One issue that can crop up for Mac admins is the problem of “I don’t want to know my users’ passwords, but I need to set up their accounts.” When setting up accounts from a directory service like...
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fdesetup sync – fdesetup’s misunderstood command
Apple’s fdesetup tool includes a number of commands, including fdesetup sync. In the fdesetup manpage, sync is listed with the following description: Synchronizes information from Open Directory to...
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Managing OS X’s automatic security updates
On Monday, December 22nd, Apple released OS X NTP Security Update 1.0 to fix a vulnerability in ntpd. What caught many folks off-guard was that this update installed itself in many cases, without...
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Adding a self-signed Casper Root CA as a trusted root
Since Elliot Jordan’s presentation at JAMF Nation User Conference 2014, I’ve started using AutoPkgr in combination with Shea Craig’s JSSImporter to automatically package and upload a number of software...
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Managing automatic installation of ConfigData and security software updates...
As mentioned previously, the updates for XProtect’s blacklist moved into Apple’s software update feed starting in Mavericks. Gatekeeper updates are also included in the software update feed on...
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2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 1,000,000 times...
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Managing automatic App Store and OS X update installation on Yosemite
To go along with the automatic installation of security updates, there are also options in Yosemite’s App Store preferences in System Preferences to have your Mac automatically install available...
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Hiding user accounts in Yosemite
On December 8th, 2014, Apple posted a KBase article showing a way to hide user accounts in Yosemite that was different than the methods available in previous versions of OS X. In Yosemite, you can add...
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