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[kaih]

Download older versions of macOS Server App from the Apple App Store

Download older versions of macOS Server App from the Apple App Store

I recently set up a new Mac mini server for a client. macOS High Sierra was released 3 days ago, however the server shipped with macOS Sierra and I thought it prudent to stick with tried and tested 10.12 rather than launch into the wild, blue yonder with a 3-day old 10.13 setup.

This was all well and good until it came to downloading Server.app from the App Store.

I logged in with the client’s…

[kaih]

Create Windows Installation Media to Boot via USB in UEFI Mode

Create Windows Installation Media to Boot via USB in UEFI Mode

I’m setting up a HP Server and didn’t configure it with an optical drive. No problem, I thought, just boot it off a USB. Easy. Not so much… This was considerably more difficult than it really should have been.

I’m wanting to install Windows Server 2016. I want to install in UEFI mode, not in BIOS mode. I also want to boot off a USB.

I created the installer USB from an iso I downloaded from…

[kaih]

Install FileMaker Server 16 on a Mac with macOS Server.app v5

Install FileMaker Server 16 on a Mac with macOS Server.app v5

The installer for FileMaker Server 16 refuses to install on a Mac if Apache is running. It doesn’t check what ports Apache has grabbed, just the fact that Apache is running is enough for the installer to bail out.

If you have Server.app running on your Mac, even if all web services are turned off or disabled, you will still have Apache running.

This situation is laughable. Apple’s subsidiary,…

[kaih]

Configuring macOS Server.app v5 to bind to a particular IP Address

Configuring macOS Server.app v5 to bind to a particular IP Address

It’s long been a painful thing for me that macOS Server.app not only binds to all IP addresses on a system, but takes port 80 and 443, even if all web-related services are off. It’s also a major annoyance that while Apple have published methods for having your app sit behind Apache as a reverse proxy in Server.app, no one uses this functionality, not even Apple’s own subsidiary FileMaker Pro.

Act…

[kaih]

Enable Retina / HiDPI modes for a Mac mini plugged into a 4K HDTV

Enable Retina / HiDPI modes for a Mac mini plugged into a 4K HDTV

This one is pretty short and simple once you get down to it.

I recently set up a client’s boardroom with a really sweet 75″ Sony 4K Android TV, a Logitech Group video conferencing webcam, a Mac mini and a Sonos Playbar. Everything was really sweet, except that the Mac mini refused to treat the TV as a Retina or HiDPI screen.

The result of this was that the Mac mini would use the TV at it’s native…

[kaih]

Keyword Searches for Email Discovery in Kerio Connect mailserver

Keyword Searches for Email Discovery in Kerio Connect mailserver

I recently had a client with a huge amount of email stored in Kerio Connect and they needed to perform discovery against some mailboxes with a lot of email in them. It was desirable to retain the folder structure, however the emails were spread across a large number of folders across 3-4 different user accounts.

I resorted to searching and gathering the raw .eml files from the Connect mail store.…

[kaih]

Firefox for Mac gets stuck on installing your updates...

Firefox for Mac gets stuck on installing your updates…

Firefox for Mac can get stuck in an update loop if you have been using an older version and it’s downloaded a new version to install, but before it gets to install it, you manually update to a new version.

The symptom is that it gets stuck with a dialog box saying “Firefox is installing your updates and will start in a few moments”

You can force-quit the updater app, but whenever you launch…

[kaih]

Set access permissions on Resource Calendars in Office 365

Set access permissions on Resource Calendars in Office 365

I’ve set up another client on Office 365 recently and they have a couple of resource calendars – one for the Boardroom and one for the Meeting Room.

What they wanted to do that was a bit different was to have both of these calendars visible in the Apple Calendar app (or what used to be called iCal). If you add people to the resource calendar as a Delegate in Office 365, then you can view the…

[kaih]

Apple's new MacBook Pro - cheaper in Australia than the USA?

Apple’s new MacBook Pro – cheaper in Australia than the USA?

We’ve hit an unusual point with pricing on Apple’s latest equipment that was announced at WWDC on 5th June (6th June Australian time).

Looking at the price on the top-spec MacBook Pro 15″ as an example, it is significantly cheaper to purchase this laptop in Australia than in the USA.

In the USA, the laptop is $2,799 USD without tax. Including NYC’s 8.875% tax this bumps it up to $3,047 USD.

In…

[kaih]

Disk-Arbitrator - Mount disks read-only on macOS

Disk-Arbitrator – Mount disks read-only on macOS

Disk Arbitrator is a Mac OS X forensic utility designed to help the user ensure correct forensic procedures are followed during imaging of a disk device. Disk Arbitrator is essentially a user interface to the Disk Arbitration framework, which enables a program to participate in the management of block storage devices, including the automatic mounting of file systems. When enabled, Disk Arbitrator…

[kaih]

Possible fix for no video in Skype for Mac

Possible fix for no video in Skype for Mac

I don’t use Skype very often, but when I went to use it recently, it couldn’t see my FaceTime HD camera.

I’d go into Skype > Preferences and in Audio/Video and although the preferences said it was using the FaceTime HD Camera, the video was black, and my contact at the other end of the call couldn’t see me.

To fix this, I went into Activity Monitor and searched for a process called VDCAssistant.…

[kaih]

Quick fix for Apple Remote Desktop 3.9 and asking for Keychain Password

After upgrading the Apple Remote Desktop client on a number of machines, and using the new 3.9 version of the Remote Desktop app, some machines have started repeatedly displaying a dialog box (on the client machine, not on the controlling machine) saying ard agent wants to use the “PrivateKeyStore-501” keychainand prompting for a password. As there is no password for this keychain, there is no…

[kaih]

Error with the User Profile Service failing the logon on Windows 7

I recently had an issue where a domain-joined machine with Windows 7 was unable to have new users log in.

Anyone who had an existing account on the machine could still log in, but new users couldn’t and were getting the error message “User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.”

Nearly all the Google searching I did on the issue returned results that were to do with…

[kaih]

Cumulus Field Formulas

This is pretty obscure stuff – I’m putting it here so I can refer to it later down the track when I’ve completely forgotten what I did.

In Canto Cumulus, you can set the value of a field using a formula. The syntax of the formulas is not my friend.

I wanted to set a String List to be one of three values depending on a value in two different boolean fields.

If boolean value A was checked, then I…

[kaih]

Configure L2TP VPN Server on Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite

Configure L2TP VPN Server on Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite

As Apple have removed PPTP VPN support from macOS Sierra (10.12 and iOS 10) I’m changing clients over to L2TP over IPSec VPNs instead. Once the VPN server is configured, there’s not much difference to configuring it at the client end over PPTP, the main difference is that you need two passwords – one for the user and one for the shared secret (or pre-shared key).

Fortunately Ubiquity have a…

[kaih]

Get system specs on an HP Server

Get system specs on an HP Server

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Windows doesn’t really have anything quite like the System Information app on macOS.

If you’ve got an HP server however, you can get some fairly detailed information about the configuration of the server as it shipped from HP without needing to inspect it physically.

First, find the serial number of the machine. Open up a CMD window and enter the following:

wmic bios…

[kaih]

Find (and delete) duplicate files

Find (and delete) duplicate files

I’ve had issues in the past where a Kerio Connect mail server talking to Apple Mail can somehow end up duplicating hundreds or even thousands of emails in mailboxes. I never got to the bottom of what was causing it, but the symptoms were that people would see their mailbox sizes grow to crazy sizes and there would be many, many duplicates of many emails in these folders.

When the issue was…