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Information Technology

Importing Data to FileMaker 16 via APIs

I’m new to APIs. Have quite a bit of FileMaker experience. I’ve decided to see if I can build a system to track parent-teacher contact. This is a system that once existed for the school in an ASP system that I mocked up and outsourced. It was replaced with Edsby, an LMS system that wasn’t truly designed for this purpose. We were smashing a square peg into a round hole. My proof of concept for this system involves seeing if I can build something that does three things I’ve never done in FileMaker before. OAuth login using Google authentication Sending nightly emails of any records that have changed for those… Read More »Importing Data to FileMaker 16 via APIs

Renewing Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app

Last time on Never Had To Fight… Adam installed a certificate using Let’s Encrypt for a macOS server running 10.12.6 and Server.app. It wasn’t exciting, but it worked. Now, three months later, we need to renew. It was actually really easy. Renew the certificates sudo certbot renew Transfer the .pem files to desktop Using the cp command enter these to copy your files. Replace <<FQDN>> with your FQDN. Replace <<USER>> with your username. sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<<FQDN>>/privkey.pem /Users/<<USER>>/Desktop/privkey.pem sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<<FQDN>>/fullchain.pem /Users/<<USER>>/Desktop/fullchain.pem Hooray, now these files are on your desktop. Install Certs Open Server.app Go to Certificates. Click on the + Choose Import Certificate Identity… Drag and drop the two .pem… Read More »Renewing Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app

Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app

Are you doing your web hosting with Server.app? You’re probably not the biggest fan of it, but it works, so… let’s keep on keeping on. Do you want to have a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt? Well, I found some really bad guides, so this is much better. *Hat tip to MacAdmins slack for a few key points Open up your Terminal.app (Go to the Go menu, choose Utilities, double-click on Terminal). This isn’t even a step, you should know this. Step One – Install Homebrew /usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)” At this point, you will be prompted to press RETURN to continue. Press the return key. It will… Read More »Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app

macOS Sierra Beta

Apple has been seeding developer previews of macOS Sierra (10.12) since the Worldwide Developer Conference in June. I installed developer preview 6 and have been using that and version 7 since their release. Fortunately, everything seems to be running quite well. One of the features of 10.12 is Siri on your Mac. The one thing I use Siri for the most is the clock functions. Timers and alarms. I tried setting a timer on my Mac using Siri, and there’s no functionality for that in 10.12. Perhaps Apple will add this functionality. In the mean time we are seeing SiriKit being made available to iOS developers in iOS 10, so… Read More »macOS Sierra Beta

Standing Desk

At my work, I have a motorized standing desk. I was looking for apps that would remind me to stand and sit at regular intervals. In the long run, I want an app that conditions me, so it starts at standing for an hour a day for a week, then two hours a day for a week, and so on and so forth. I can’t find that app. Instead I made a quick AppleScript that will prompt me to change position every 45 minutes. set answer to “” repeat while answer ≠ “Quit” set answer to the button returned of (display dialog “Please rise.” buttons {“Quit”, “Okay”} default button 2)… Read More »Standing Desk

NetGear ReadyNAS Time Machine Backup

It seems you cannot mount your Time Machine backup on a ReadyNAS device using normal credentials. Time Machine is segmented off with a special user. Which means I needed to restore my computer using Migration Assistant. It took FOREVER over wifi. However, I seem to be missing my Aperture Libraries. What’s the solution? Assuming it was backed up, I need to find the sparsebundle. It took a lot of searching, but I found it, and will share my brilliance with you in case you ever need to find it, too. /data/.timemachine To access: SSH in as root. Then copy the files to a SMB or AFP accessible directory. cd /data/.timemachine… Read More »NetGear ReadyNAS Time Machine Backup

Adam

New Job, New Server

If you weren’t aware, when the month changed from June to July, I also changed jobs. I graduated from elementary school to high school. Today was the first day at my new job where I really had time to myself to do what I please. It was time to play with servers. The school already had a Hyper-V setup, so I installed a copy of Ubuntu and hit the ground running. Once I had the IP setup and SSH enabled, I was ready to go. First thing to install was Docker. $ wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh With that simple command I had Docker running on the server. For those… Read More »New Job, New Server

Yosemite Sam 10.10.3

In September, Apple released OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). September is not a good time to release a new OS from the point of view of a K-8 IT Manager. We need a few months before the school year starts to do testing, and that was not able to happen. In previous years I had waited until the following summer to upgrade. This year with the implementation of Munki at the school, I wanted to roll out 10.10 to staff and students as an optional install after 10.10.3 or 10.10.4 was released. During the Passover break, Apple released 10.10.3, and that release led to a major realization. Apple had patched a… Read More »Yosemite Sam 10.10.3

AutoPKGr

I’ve been using Munki at work for some time. Munki is a system for central management of package installation for OS X computers. It allows end-users to be forced installs from IT, and allows a catalogue of IT-approved installs that end-users can install themselves. It’s really handy. However, to manually add packages all the time, with constant updates from Google, Mozilla, Adobe, Apple, Evernote, and more and more, all my time would be spent searching for updates. Instead I use a command-line tool called AutoPKG which looks for updates from any program you specify (assuming a recipe has been created), and AutoPKG will download it and install it into your… Read More »AutoPKGr

Apple Canadian Settings through MCX

Background I was tired of looking at my end-user’s screens and calling up “Managed Software Center” rather than “Managed Software Centre.” I figured I would enforce both the system-wide language setting, as well as enforce keyboard layouts to include both Canadian English and Hebrew. Those are kept in two files. com.apple.HIToolbox.plist holds the Keyboard settings .GlobalPreferences.plist holds the language settings The leading . means that it’s an invisible file, but you can use the terminal to copy it to another location: cp ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist /PATH/TO/GlobalPreferences.plist If you notice that in the second path, I removed the leading . to make it visible. .Plist setup The keyboard settings file just need to… Read More »Apple Canadian Settings through MCX