Tech Tidbits

Win7 Upgrade/Install paths

Gus — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:29:27 +0000

Confused on the path to Windows 7? Check out the chart from MossBlog:

New Business

Gus — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:34:58 +0000

My wife & I have started a new business. For details see our google site.

Protected: 2009-2010 SMS Image

Gus — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:35:09 +0000

DeployStudio Setup

Gus — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:30:43 +0000

Overview

As designed, the setup of DeployStudio in my environment goes through the following stages:

Netboot (firewire or hardwired)
Image
Rename & set bind info
Reboot
Login as admin
Connect to wireless via 802.1x (if not hardwired)
Execute bind script (automatically done)

Setup

Serv2

OS: 10.5.7

Updating OS on server or clients MAY break binding capabilities due to Apple’s flakiness with patching the AD binding stuff.
Server is bound to Active Directory.
Deploystudio RC12 and AD/OD binding tested under 10.5.7 only.

Scripts:

In the following scripts, edit:

From: /usr/sbin/ipconfig waitall to: ping -i 10 -o xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (ip address of domain controller or similar.)

In the netboot image (/Volumes/RAID/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0/DSRuntime-v1.nb/DeployStudioRuntime.sparseimage) —

/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio\ Admin.app/Contents/Resources/Runtime.app/Contents/Frameworks/DSCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Scripts/Common/ds_directory_binding.sh

/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio\ Admin.app/Contents/Resources/Runtime.app/Contents/Frameworks/DSCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Scripts/Common/ds_active_directory_binding/ds_active_directory_binding.sh

/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio\ Admin.app/Contents/Resources/Runtime.app/Contents/Frameworks/DSCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Scripts/Common/ds_active_directory_binding/ds_active_directory_binding_install.sh

/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio\ Admin.app/Contents/Resources/Runtime.app/Contents/Frameworks/DSCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Scripts/Common/ds_open_directory_binding/ds_open_directory_binding.sh

In those same scripts, there are a few more changes relating to workstation naming:

At least one of the scripts accesses the web based workstation name database to retrieve the assigned workstation name (and suffix) according to Helpdesk.

District specific scripts

ds_sms-asr.sh — For firewire drive images. Hardcoded asr command. Filename is specified on the Parameter line of the workflow.

ds_setcomputername.sh — Computername query from sps websserver.

SetHostNames — via Bombich. Works in conjunction with ds_setcomputername.sh

Backup

The completed scripts, netboot image, etc are stored in: //file1/techsrv/sms/

The server is set to run a sparseimage backup of itself on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month at 21:30hrs. The backup image is in it’s own attached raid drives. – /Volumes/Raid/backup/

Image Repository

/Volumes/Raid/Images/DS/Masters/HFS/

This is shared as //server/Images/

Issues

The server is supposedly managed through System Preferences, but we’ve had issues with this. If the repository is not accessible, try these commands:

sudo “/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio Admin.app/Contents/MacOS/DeployStudioServerEnabler” -stop

sudo “/Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio Admin.app/Contents/MacOS/DeployStudioServerEnabler” -start

You can also try unloading and reloading the server via launchd:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.deploystudio.server.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.deploystudio.server.plist

Additional Info

Followup: I’ll probably have an upcoming post on imaging..

Movie Publishing for the Web on a Mac

Gus — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:11:36 +0000

[Sorry - This blog does not support embedded video]

iMovie ‘08

With your edited and finished movie in iMovie ‘08: go to Share, Export Using Quicktime.

Exporting/Sharing a movie with iMovie (& iMovie HD)

Evening Fireworks

Walt Disney World, Florida

March 2008

In the Export selection box, make sure it says Movie to QuickTime Movie and pick Steaming – Medium settings in the Use selection box. Finally, Click on Save.

With your edited and finished movie in Movie ‘08: go to Share, then Share…

Choose the Expert Settings and click on the Share button.

That brings us to the settings options. For the best overall size to quality ratio for the web, choose Streaming – Medium.

All that’s left is to pick where you want to save the file (thin this example it’s being saved to the Desktop) and click on the Save button.

iWeb ‘08

Open iWeb and create a New Page if you wish (I used the Movie template). Open finder, and drag the exported movie from finder to your webpage in iWeb. When you publish your website, the movie will be transferred appropriately — there is no special file copying or anything else necessry.

Continue the publishing process using iWeb (see below).

iMovie HD

Eric “Gus”tafson

(with apologies for the formatting. My original was as a standard webpage, not a blog post and I did a quick copy/paste a minor reformatting. The original iWeb document was at http://people.sps.lane.edu/eric.gustafson/web/Movie_Publishing.html

orting/Sharing a movie with iMovie (& iMovie HD)

Leopard client with AD Binding & OD Preferences

Gus — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:44:29 +0000

.. partial notes..

Laptop built using district build 34 and all updates to 10.5.6 (including sw).
bound to AD
802.1x configuration created as a Login Window Profile with blank username/password for the district wireless network
dc1 cert stored in keychain as part of a default Login profile.
Enabled network connection radiobutton/icon for the login window. It is configured in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow, the option is AdminHostInfo = DSStatus. It can be set in Terminal via:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo DSStatus

The account appears as Networked, Managed on my currrent build-box.
I’m not sure yet why it’s appearing as a Managed account as the
username tested is only in domain users and not one of the groups
managed via OD.

Notes:

/Library/Preferemces/edu.mit.Kerberos – shows last BINDing
open keychain, create new kerberos ticket to verify secure connection capability.
/library/preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist — shows exported/current 802.1x config

from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3326

Login Window Mode: This mode is called Login Window because the 802.1X session originates from the login window using credentials entered at the login window. The same credentials are used to both authenticate to the network and authenticate the user to a directory service.

At the login screen, one enters a name and password. If LoginWindow can’t find a local user account with that name, it initiates an 802.1X session using the same name and password and in the case of an 802.11 network, it associates to the wireless network. After the 802.1X authentication completes, LoginWindow authenticates the user against the directory service. If that authentication succeeds, the user is logged in.

When the user logs out, LoginWindow checks whether the 802.1X session is one that it started, and if so, it stops the 802.1X session, and if an 802.11 network, disassociates from the network.

If no one is logged in, no 802.1X session is running, and no 802.11 network will be joined. The Mac is not available on the authenticated network.

If a laptop is bound to both ad and od, any Domain Users account may
login so long as Dial-In is allowed (and not following the current NPS
settings). The user account does not receive any mappings and has full
use of the system as a standard user.

Tech Tools page updated

Gus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:35:13 +0000

I added some of my favorites to the Tech Tools Page.

Tech related parodies on YouTube

Gus — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:12:08 +0000

Here’s a quick starter. – http://irrashai.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/the-day-the-routers-died/

After it’s done playing, there are about 15 others listed.

Windows Live tools

Gus — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:56:18 +0000

Some newer free utils from MS for the pc including Windows Live Writer (blog editor – works with wordpress), and a newer version of Windows Movie Maker. Others are Photo Gallery, Messenger, Mail, Toolbar, and Family Safety. These are all a part of the ‘live’ family.

Here’s a starting link: http://download.live.com/moviemaker

Youtube video downloading

Gus — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:44:53 +0000

Any easy way to download and view youtube videos:

Using Firefox, add the DownloadHelper plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/latest/3006

Go to the youtube video you want to grab, and in the upper left of Firefox near the ‘Home’ icon you’ll see 3 rotating balls.Click on it and it’ll say video.flv or similar. If the video is also available in HD format, the link will show up for that one also – the hd videos are saved in mp4 format which is directly editable in iMovie.

Click on that filename and it’ll prompt for where to save the file.

If you wish to convert a FLV to another format (mov or mp4 for example) you can try out some of the free online converters:

VideoLan client is a great video player and supports the youtube FLV format as well as divx, xvid, wmv, mp4, and a slew of others..

My second preference for video playback would be a free addon for the Quicktime Player called Perian. http://www.perian.org/#download

Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional media:

File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

I’ll list a third viewer for the mac too, but I haven’t used it before and it may interfere with adobe Flash player. It’s also a lot more limited on the number of video formats it will play. – http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/swfflvplayer.html