Tag: macOS

Changes to Microsoft AutoUpdate deferral options

Kevin M. Cox February 25, 2024 1 Comment

Microsoft AutoUpdate 4 Microsoft began offering curated deferral channels for AutoUpdate a little over two years ago. These feeds allowed MacAdmins to delay updates to Office apps for a set number of days, without having to run a custom manifest server themselves.

Unfortunately these deferral channels have recently stopped working, leaving many MacAdmins scrambling to adjust.

Thankfully the community has engaged Microsoft and have pushed for a solution.

Read on for the details on why this happened and how to adjust your configuration.

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Granting Munki Full Disk Access

Kevin M. Cox February 24, 2024 No Comments

Munki Munki has been a staple management tool for many MacAdmins for a decade.

However in recent releases of macOS, Munki needs to be granted Privacy Preferences Policy Control permissions to access certain disk locations or update some apps.

Thankfully this has become very easy in the past year thanks to the MacAdmins community.

Read on for details and an example configuration profile.

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Retroactive Automated Device Enrollment in macOS Sonoma

Kevin M. Cox September 29, 2023 29 Comments

Apple released macOS 14 Sonoma this week, and on top of the numerous consumer facing features, there are also a number of interest to MacAdmins.

• What’s new for enterprise in macOS Sonoma

While there are many improvements to features like Declarative Device Management (DDM) and MDM, one of the most interesting to me only got a short mention with no details.

Automated Device Enrollment can be enforced after Setup Assistant.

This feature, which I’m calling Retroactive Automated Device Enrollment, was announced during WWDC and I extensively tested it during the beta cycles.

I think there is some amazing potential here. Read on for details…

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Keyboard Setup Assistant, YubiKeys and a Munki NoPkg

Kevin M. Cox June 21, 2023 No Comments

We are always looking for ways to reduce friction for end users. Our job in IT is to empower users to get their work done with as few technological distractions as possible.

Many times Apple makes this harder due to features or functionality in macOS. One such example is Keyboard Setup Assistant (KSA) which automatically launches anytime a new input device is detected.

While this is very helpful for consumers who have purchased a new peripheral; in a corporate setting it can be an annoyance multiplied thousands of times over.

YubiKeys present to macOS as keyboards and trigger KSA. When rolling them out we decided to use a Munki NoPkg to save our co-workers from having to dismiss this useless dialog.

Read on for the details…

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MunkiReport, Python 3 and PHP 8

Kevin M. Cox June 20, 2023 No Comments

MunkiReport 5.8 was released today and primarily includes compatibility with Python 3 and PHP 8.

Just like last year’s release of 5.7, this new version of MunkiReport requires admins to deploy a specific Python package to clients before updating.

It will also likely require a coordinated update on your web server to enable PHP 8.

Read on for the details…

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Gather logs with a Munki NoPkg

Kevin M. Cox June 14, 2023 No Comments

CREDIT: flaticon.com

Troubleshooting with remote users can often be a challenge.

This is especially true when you need to see logs stored in hidden folders that users can’t easily find.

To make this process easier for both IT and our staff we added a Self-Service item to Managed Software Center to easily gather everything we need.

Read on for the details…

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AWS VPN diagnostics with a Munki NoPkg

Kevin M. Cox June 13, 2023 No Comments

Troubleshooting VPN issues can be tricky for end users.

When we started to see recurring issues with AWS VPN, our Cloud team asked us to make it easier to gather logs and run diagnostics.

We already utilize Managed Software Center for Self-Service so a Munki NoPkg was the logical solution.

The result is a script that gathers all the requested information and makes it easy for users to share with just one click.

Read on for the details…

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Enabling macOS betas with a Munki NoPkg

Kevin M. Cox June 12, 2023 No Comments

Apple changed the process for enrolling in macOS beta seeds beginning with 13.4 released in May 2023.

What could previously be automated via the seedutil command line tool now requires user interaction.

Thankfully we can still use Managed Software Center to make this process easier for users.

Read on for the details…

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Uninstalling Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub with Munki

Kevin M. Cox May 7, 2023 1 Comment

A very annoying bug in the latest release of Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub caused us to uninstall it from our macOS fleet using Munki.

Last week VMware released version 23.04.0 and the users in our testing group were immediately bombarded with a confusing error dialog. These errors would appear repeatedly throughout the day and worst of all, steal focus every time.

We halted the rollout and immediately engaged VMware support who confirmed the issue isn’t isolated to our tenant. Multiple customers are experiencing the bug including others in the #workspaceone channel on the MacAdmins Slack.

However despite pulling 24.04 from Munki and making sure automatic updates were disabled in our WS1 console, the install count continued to climb. With no resolution in sight from VMware we decided to remove 24.04 from our fleet completely.

So much for Read-Only Friday! Read on for the details…

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Nudge deadlines in local timezones

Kevin M. Cox March 22, 2023 4 Comments

Nudge icon A frequent request for the open source tool Nudge is local timezone support. Nudge was coded to use UTC for configuring and enforcing the installation deadline for macOS updates.

This means that global companies have had to pick a single deadline for their entire fleet. Alternatively they could deploy multiple configurations for different regions. Neither option is ideal.

Bob Gendler set out to code a local timezone feature only to find out, to everyone’s surprise, that it already exists!

Read on for the details…

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