Configuration Madness

Configure the World

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-04T12:46:24-05:00

Ok - this past month I've installed or configured the following:
Xserve G-5
OSX 10.4 Tiger -w/clients bound to Active Directory
OSX server on a g-4 cube !
RedHat 3 ES Enterprise Server - on a VMWare box
Microsoft Content Management Server - from eval to fully licensed
Media Beacon Server - XServe G-5
Extensis X1 Font Server - XServer on G-5 Desktop
Adobe CS2 - G5 DP clients

@ chrisboprkowski.com :
ImageMagick
Coppermine Gallery
Exhibit Engine

The entries in this section will document the HOW TO's and the snags I ran into.

OSX 10.4 Tiger Passwords and Active Directory...

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-04T15:19:40-05:00

...or should I say InActive Directory.

This one is a big flaw for anyone who's figured out how to bind an OSX client to Active Directory.

This seems to be a hit or miss install, 2/3 of the machine's that I've upgraded to tiger the installer missed a key file that tells SMB how to send passwords to AD. Tiger will want to send encrypted passwords and unless the Windows server has the option turned on logins will fail for Mac accounts (Managed Mobile) created by AD in 10.3 or earlier. Basically you have insert or rewrite a file OR set your Windows servers to use plain text passwords. The later could potentially reek havoc on your Windows network that has many clients, apps, and servers sending passwords as plain text.

See the entry below on how to fix the issue. I used Remote Desktop to proliferate the fixed file to the clients.

One last note:
For some unexplained reason I've had to manually set the password a few machines and only for some but not all cached AD accounts. Open a shell to the machine and issue the commands and follow the password prompts:
$ sudo passwd username

OSX 10.4 Tiger upgrades - Terminal(y) not running

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-04T15:26:53-05:00

The Problem: User shell in Terminal not running because of settings in Active Directory.

Basically the Terminal is denied to users because of the enter in the local netinfo which will be re/set from AD. In 10.3 this was not and issue, but as the Directory Services in 10.4 becomes more accurate the entry seems to get stuck and this is a real big issue for users like myself who constantly use the terminal.

The quick fix is to slam the setting in your local netinfo directory and dump the user preference. Do this logged in as an admin.

sudo chsh -s /bin/bash username

sudo rm /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal

However, I found that the next time the account logs via AD the fix is set back to the entry in AD. I can't confirm it yet but the long term fix would be to map "UserShell" or "loginShell" to "#/bin/bash" in Acitve Directory (the "#" at the start indicates a static mapping).

OSX - Running the Disk Utility from the Terminal

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-05T13:22:50-05:00

...aka repair machines from the comfort of your cubical.

Still cleaning up after my first Tiger upgrade.

Here's a nice little command that I've found that runs "reapir disk permissions" from a shell. I've "piped" "|" it with a "tee" command to write out a log file on the root of the hard drive that will list the files that have been repaired.

This is great ! I can ssh to the machine I need to fix and it's faster that Remote Access and totally transparent allowing the current user to work....fast, invisible, clever !

$ diskutil repairPermissions / | tee /repairPermissions_07_05_05.log

If you prefer you can use an alternate logging/record method where it writes out a text file on your desktop - insert your user name in the appropriate place in the command:

$ diskutil repairPermissions / >> /Users/user name/Desktop/repairPermissions_07_05_05.txt

OSX/Linux how to find stuff in the terminal

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-05T13:35:38-05:00

OK, it's not Spotlight, but DUH! who would have throught the unix command is "find". Well it's not that easy because there are a number of flags and options available that have to be formated when issuing the "find" command. Here's an example that searches your whole computer for anything called "windows" and prints the results to the terminal window.

$ find / -name windows -print

cool ! for when your only option is to work in a shell.

One more tip : try using "whereis' to find thoese little strange apps like :

$ whereis php
/usr/bin/php

see the extended entry for more examples or
$ man find

Force prebinding from the Terminal

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-07T11:07:23-05:00

This is a follow up to the repair permissions post the other day. Please note that it's come to my attention that prebinding is no longer necessary in Tiger. For those who are still running OSX 10.3> this is still valid.

A good follow up maintence rutine to perform after you've repair disk permssions is updating the prebiding on a system. Prebinding is a method of associating executable applications with required assets prior to their launch. This can decrease the time taken to load an application.
I cloned a few OSX 10.3 machines a few days ago and ran into some problems while trying to print. The error logs in the pointed to some problem files in the Library/FrameWorks/ ....altevec files as well as others.

not knowing how to fix I took a stab and tried to update the prebinding. When you clone an OSX machine using somthing like CCC from bombich, as good as it is, it will sometimes miss a few things.

so here's the command line to udate or force your systems prebinding. again I've piped it with a tee to make a log just incase I need to follow up on where things may have gone wrong.

$ sudo update_prebinding -root / -force -verbose -debug | tee prebingin7605.log

see the extended entry for more details

How to take a screen shot from the terminal

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-07T14:51:37-05:00

OK - you get a call from a users asking how do take a screen shot. Open a shell to their computer as root and issue the following command:

$ screencapture -W /Users/username/Desktop/picture.pict

the "-W" key will turn the cursor into a camera icon and the file will be placed on their desktop

use an "-i" for cross hairs and the user will be able to lasso thier pictue selection.

see the extended entry below for more options

What are all thoes folders anyway ?

Chris Borkowski — 2005-07-09T16:16:04-05:00

OSX is Unix, by now that should be clear, Unix systems have a standardized file system, gone are the OS9 days where you could store anything anywhere, pictures file kept in your extensions folders...who cared ? the OS still ran. Things are a bit different now as you might have well noticed. So here's a rundown of what happens in those OSX directories.

see the extended body for a complete list; this was gathered from http://www.macdevcenter.com/

Apple Remote Desktop and Linux Redhat...and beyond

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 12:03:09 -0500

Apple's Remote Desktop is great, it extends your abilty to admin machines beyond what you can do from the terminal. The cool thing about it is that it's built around AT&T's or realvnc standards meaning you can control just about any OS running a VNC client....windows/linux/etc.

To get started check your OS (in this case REL 3 - Red Hat Enterprise v3) from a terminal enter

$ rmp -q vnc-server

this will return your curent setup

if it's not installed then you'll have to fetch the rpm or tar file. RPS's are a lot easier. My system is subscribed to Red Hats Network so it's east to fetch and install from one simple command line

$ up2date vnc-server

authenticate when asked

the rest takes a few more steps to set up. read the extened entry