Comments for Mac Operations

Comment on Rolling OS X packages with FPM and Homebrew by Cory Logan

Cory Logan — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:59:46 +0000

Thanks a bunch for the intro to brew-pkg, I’ve been wanting that for ages. I’ve been using packagemaker to do the same thing, but it’s much too messy.

Comment on Xcode deployment: The dvtdownloadableindex and iOS Simulators/SDKs by happlebao

happlebao — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:33:12 +0000

The only useful page!!!

Comment on Modifying the TCC database by tim

tim — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:20:41 +0000

I think this is what you’re looking for:

https://github.com/timsutton/scripts/blob/master/tccmanager/tcc_services.plist

Comment on Modifying the TCC database by bsdjunkie

bsdjunkie — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:17:10 +0000

Any link to the sample plist file?

Comment on Introducing Brigadier, a tool for automated Boot Camp driver download and installation by Peet McKinney

Peet McKinney — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:21:36 +0000

Holy crap. Thank you.

Comment on Java 7: How not to use launchd for your app by Don Montalvo

Don Montalvo — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:08:44 +0000

Offshore your development and get cr@p in return.

Java deserves its place along side that other outsourced blob of garbage Adobe Flash Player.

Don Montalvo, TX

Comment on Java 7: How not to use launchd for your app by Josh W

Josh W — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 01:03:22 +0000

Re: the last line: You’re assuming that the release engineer actually *did* debug and test this him/herself. I suspect that’s not the case.

Comment on Java 7: How not to use launchd for your app by Digging in to Java 7: Poor LaunchDaemon Usage

Digging in to Java 7: Poor LaunchDaemon Usage — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:46:26 +0000

[...] Sutton has a post that talks about how Java 7 uses LaunchDaemons in a very poor fashion. The amount of poor [...]

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by tim

tim — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:32:58 +0000

Thanks Andrew – so that clears things up a bit. The properties file settings are effective, but only when the Java applet loader is checking for updates. It would seem that there’s still no supported mechanism to disable the Sparkle-based update checker.

This explains why some people have reported the changes seeming to work – they weren’t referring to the same issue, and disabling the checker within the plugin itself _does_ seem to work.

One of the things preventing others from easily reproducing the issue that’s detailed in this post is the tricks done by the Helper-Tool script to modify the same LaunchAgent plist one is trying to test.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 06:58:28 +0000

I’ve created an updated version of the original script that turned off the “Check for Updates” preference. It now removes the Launch Agent and adds additional keys to the deployment.properties file that, in my testing, suppresses the prompt you get when opening a Java app using an older version of Java. This script will have to be run after each version of Java is deployed.

Updated/Modified script is in this thread: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=6489

Take a look and see if it works for you… any feedback is appreciated.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by tim

tim — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:32:34 +0000

It will prompt for an update if a user is logged in at the time of the StartCalendarInterval in the LaunchAgent, and yes, this date is set at the time of the installation. But the Helper-Tool will also fix up these times if they change, and possibly randomize the day.

Again, these are my observations only. Nobody else has confirmed that this is broken, but neither has anyone described why he believes it “seems to be working” for him.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by Brad

Brad — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:25:59 +0000

WTH Oracle! Thanks for your hard work Tim! I think I am going to stick with the deployment.properties file in /Library… I’m not really down for the two options you have proposed here. If I understand your post correctly, there is still a possibility that it will randomly ask to update due to the time stamp set by the initial installer?

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by xendo

xendo — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:13:57 +0000

Against my recommendations and wishes, “the business” decided that all our users should have admin access. No, I don’t like it either. It’s a bad, stupid decision. But it’s out of my hands.

The only version of Java we deploy is the one we know works. However, some users have decided they just *have* to have Java 7 – obviously for no good reason other than they want it, because it’s new – and have installed it using their poorly justified admin privs. For them, I’m taking the exact opposite approach. Anyone who has Java 7 installed, based on an inventory of the installer receipts, gets the latest version shoved down their throats by our software management system. Basically, they’ve also ready jumped off that bridge; if they simply *must* have Java 7 installed, then I’m insisting they have the least vulnerable version.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by tim

tim — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:53:08 +0000

At install time, the postinstall script effectively sets the StartCalendarInterval to be the current hour and minute, with a random day of the week.

It’s always possible that if the hour/minute is consistent with a time that a user is usually not logged in or the machine is off.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by FTBZ

FTBZ — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:15:27 +0000

Sending the package by Absolute Manage on all clients and a script that edits the deployment.properties in each user folder. Our users are really assisted, so every time that a popup appears you will be sure that the helpdesk gets calls. But perhaps no one has called the helpdesk at this time.

When Apple has disabled Flash the last time, we got more than 10 calls about the missing plug-in only the Monday morning.

With your information I will check in depth the problem, to be sure my users are not annoyed.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by tim

tim — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:05:01 +0000

How rapidly have you been pushing out new releases? Also, if a user is logged out or the machine is off when the StartCalendarInterval time arrives, the prompt won’t appear. I believe this time is based on the actual time of the Java installation, so this might tell you when users are likely to see a popup.

Would all of your 400 users tell you if they saw the prompt and just told it to “Skip this version”?

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by FTBZ

FTBZ — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:53 +0000

From the start, we have disabled the update by this way and no one of our 400 users has seen an updater message. And I’m using this on my own workstation and I’ve never been annoyed by the Java updater. Perhaps we’re very lucky or something is different in our workstations. I’m doing something wrong ?

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by tim

tim — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:34:47 +0000

As I mentioned in the post and the various linked threads, this doesn’t actually prevent Java Updater from launching.

The default StartCalendarInterval for The LaunchAgent is once weekly, so it’s possible to go a while without seeing the issue, unless you modify the LaunchAgent to run more frequently.

Comment on Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates by FTBZ

FTBZ — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 06:05:27 +0000

Why not editing the file deployment.properties directly in each user’s folder ? This is what we’re doing here.

Comment on Customizing hardware model filters for NetBoot by tim

tim — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:39:59 +0000

Interesting. We should be getting some iMac13,1/2′s in a few weeks, so I’ll be interested to see if we see anything similar!