hacks - Jacob Salmela (Page 2)

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A collection of 41 posts

Casper Imaging in the Recovery HD and A Lightweight Netboot Image

Casper Imaging in the Recovery HD and A Lightweight Netboot Image

[UPDATE] JAMF has set the feature request for this as under review [https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=1069] OS X Netboot images can be many GigaBytes in size, which is not great when multiple client computers are trying to download that image from the network, especially if the

Read Quora Forums First Answer Without An Account

Read Quora Forums First Answer Without An Account

Some sites like Quora prompt for you to sign in before reading the first answer. These posts appear in Google searches. Rather than signing up for an account, you can use AdBlock plus [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb?hl=en-US] to read the post. Click the AdBlock

OS X Yosemite and osascript: Enabling Access to Assistive Devices

OS X Yosemite and osascript: Enabling Access to Assistive Devices

I love automating things, so I also wrote a command line utility that you can use to add items into the accessibility database (located at /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/tcc.db ). https://github.com/jacobsalmela/tccutil/releases An example of how to use this, would be to allow

">console " A Secret Terminal Hidden at the OS X Login Window

">console " A Secret Terminal Hidden at the OS X Login Window

Access a secret command line interface hidden at the OS X login window! Go ahead and try it–make yourself feel like a power user or show off to your friends. I stumbled upon an old article on Macworld [http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020318020806482] from 2002 talking

OS X Mavericks: Change the Login Window Icon or Wallpaper

OS X Mavericks: Change the Login Window Icon or Wallpaper

Replacing the default Apple Logo with your own is a great way to customize OS X. This trick could also work with organizations looking to brand their Macs with their logo. A while back, OS X Daily showed how to replace the grey-colored background with your own wallpaper [http://osxdaily.

tccutil.py: Command Line Utility for Modifying the Accessibility Database in OS X

tccutil Featured

tccutil.py: Command Line Utility for Modifying the Accessibility Database in OS X

I love working in the command line, but one part of OS X that thus far has been difficult to script is modifying the accessibility database in OS X 10.9. There are many examples out there of people needing to do something like this: * https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.

Fix Multiple Recovery HDs (D-007146) Created In Casper Imaging and Nested Configurations

Fix Multiple Recovery HDs (D-007146) Created In Casper Imaging and Nested Configurations

Defect D-007146 in JAMF’s Casper Suite creates multiple Recovery HD partitions when using nested imaging configs. This defect is marked as “High Priority” and “Planned for Release” so hopefully we will see a fix soon, but until then, use this as a workaround. The following script will delete any

Un-clutter Your Dropbox on Mac Using chflags and ln

Un-clutter Your Dropbox on Mac Using chflags and ln

Dropbox integrates with a lot of different apps. If you use a lot of these third-party apps, your Dropbox might start to get cluttered and look like this: I wanted to have all my third-party apps to be in a single folder called Applications. I first tried just moving the

Save Installer From Mac App Store (Updates and New Apps)

If you are an OS X administrator and deploy apps or updates, having a .pkg format is very useful. Wouldn’t it be nice to save the installer from the App Store? By default, any new apps or updates magically appear in the /Applications folder. In the background, however, there

OS X Terminal: Log All Commands into the system.log

Pasting the follow code into ~/.bash_profile will append any commands entered into the syslog with the tag BASHFU. PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a;tail -n1 ~/.sh_history | logger -t BASHFU' This is a fun trick that I use with my Single-user Mode Intrusion Detection System [http://www.jacobsalmela.com/product/

OS X Recovery Partition: Customizing With Different Apps

OS X Recovery Partition: Customizing With Different Apps

Originally, I wanted to use Casper Imaging from the Recovery partition. So this post is based off of this article and this feature request [https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=415] on JAMF Nation. At the end, I realized I probably wouldn’t be able to add this app

Raspberry Pi + Cantenna: Ultimate 2.4GHz Wardriving and Long-range WiFi Access

Want to turn your Raspberry Pi into a portable antenna / wireless router that can be used to pick up WiFi signals from great distances? I did. I will walkthrough how to make the 2.4GHz cantenna using some cheap components and then setup the Pi as a router so you

Single-user Mode on OS X: Intrusion Detection System: An EFI Password Alternative

My Single-user Mode Intrusion Detection system [https://github.com/jacobsalmela/single-user-mode-ids] works in two parts: 1. a local script is deployed to all client machines 2. a script runs via GeekTool every two seconds Script Deployed To All Client Machines The root users’ /var/root/.profile file is a special

Chome: Adding Custom Search Engines to Supercharge the Omnibar

Requirements For This Walkthrough Materials 1. Mac or PC 2. Chrome [https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/] Downloads 1. None Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities * Ability to read and understand the components of a search URL * Ability to copy and paste (modifying, if necessary) a URL Resources * http://lifehacker.

Wi-Fi Cantenna (2.4GHz): How-to Make a Long-range Wi-Fi Antenna

cantenna Featured

Wi-Fi Cantenna (2.4GHz): How-to Make a Long-range Wi-Fi Antenna

Create a cantenna to drastically extend your Wi-Fi signal! Works great with a router that has external antennas, like the old-school classic WRT54G. Requirements For This Walkthrough Materials 1. A wireless router [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LV89BEG/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=

OS X Scripting: How-to Script A Mouse Click At X-Y Coordinate

Automate annoying and repetitive mouse clicks with this great trick! Requirements For This Walkthrough Materials 1. Internet Access (if downloading the file) 2. Mac running OS X 3. Xcode (if compiling on your own) Downloads 1. Click [http://www.macosxhints.com/dlfiles/click_binary.zip] click [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/