04 Oct 2011
Another foray into recent reads, all pretty great books.
Terminal World - Alistair Reynolds
A story where the lead character becomes progressively less human physically, but more human in character throughout the story. It’s a great far-future-post-apocalyptic adventure with humans, machines and things somewhere in-between.
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Quite possibly my favourite book of the year. It’s a video game sci-fi adventure of the like conjured up by Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow with a bucketload of vintage video game references and 80’s pop culture thrown in.
REAMDE - Neal Stephenson
A slightly shady founder of an MMORPG, Terrorists, MI6 and Russians. It’s not the best I’ve read from Neal Stephenson, but it’s in the top three.
Stark’s War (The Trilogy) - John G. Hemry
More sci-fi, but this time with a military twist. Three fairly entertaining books that cover a mutiny and a fight to preserve freedom and the rights given to citizens by the U.S. Constitution.
Feed - Mira Grant
Deadline - Mira Grant
More post-apocalyptic near future adventures, now with more zombies! The Newsflesh novels follow Georgia and Shaun Mason kicking arse, taking names and blogging all about it.
17 Sep 2011
A follow-up to my earlier article “MacOSX (10.6), Managed Preferences without OSX Server”, this is just a run through of what to do once you’ve got your Macs in the Active Directory (AD) and want to manage the policies on groups of machines (computer-lists, in Apple terminology), instead of managing preferences individually for each machine.
First of all, a computer-list ‘group’ is needed, which AD doesn’t know about, as groups in AD are universal, and not split by member object type. This means we will need to open ADSI Edit and create an object based on the computer-list class and then manually add the machine accounts to it, as AD doesn’t see this object as a group. When you add machines to this group, you need to specify the machine’s object name in AD (the machine name, followed by the $ sign). Look here for more info + images on how that looks.
Once the computer-list is created and the Macs are added into this group, you can manage the preferences just by changing the group’s attributes with Workgroup Manager, shown below. After opening Workgroup Manager, you need to ‘View Directories’, as you can’t connect to AD in the same way Workgroup Manager would connect to Open Directory (OD). Then you have to authenticate yourself with your AD account set up to administer the computer-list group. This is so you don’t have to log into the Mac with Workgroup Manager as an admin all the time.
Once you’ve logged in and found your computer-list group, the journey is nearly over, all that’s left is to change some preferences! We don’t want any profanity displayed in the dictionary now, do we?
That’s pretty much it, it’s a little annoying having to support the machine group with ADSI Edit, but I’m sure some powershell scripting that automatically adds machines with iMac or apple in the name to this group would be pretty easy.
25 Jul 2011
I have tested this in both a development and a production Windows Server 2008 R2 environment, extending the schema to allow Mac OSX computers to received managed preferences direct from the Active Directory (AD), and not requiring a separate OSX directory server to supply those preferences.
I don’t understand why Apple don’t just give people the pre-made ldif file, with it configured to add only missing classes and attributes. The current method involves having to buy OSX server to do this, which is crazy (This may have changed in 10.7, I don’t know yet).
Anyway, below is the correctly configured ldif file that will add the required attributes and classes to an AD schema. The environment I tested it in was a standard AD, with schema extensions for System Center Configuration Manager (SSCM) applied.
The following file is supplied with absolutely no guarantees and may in fact cause your Active Directory environment to spontaneously combust, or develop an unhealthy craving for human brains
ADSchemaExtension_OSX10.6.ldif
You should add this schema modification to the AD schema, by using the following command:
ldifde -i -u -f ADSchemaExtension_OSX10.6.ldif -s server:port -b username domain password -j . -c “cn=Configuration,dc=X” #configurationNamingContext
If you run this command on the schema master, you can omit the username/password and server/port part from the command, as so:
ldifde -i -u -f ADSchemaExtension_OSX10.6.ldif -j . -c “cn=Configuration,dc=X” #configurationNamingContext
More information on ldifde is in the technet article for ldifde.
Once the schema has been extended, you can treat the AD as a direct replacement for the OSX Open Directory Server in regards to managing preferences.
The next step is to join your Macs to the domain with the AD connector and set up your administration machine to control preferences for Macs in the domain, by installing the Server Admin Tools for OSX 10.6.
23 Jul 2011
Just thought I would share some of the books I have read recently.
Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero - Dan Abnett
A brilliant romp through an alternate-universe England where ‘The Arte’, a form of magic takes the place of science and technology.
Rule 34 - Charles Stross
If you are familiar with the definition of rule 34, or any of Stross’ earlier work, this is for you. It’s probably his best novel so far, with his ‘Laundry Files’ series a close second.
Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
A book I re-read a lot, I came back to it again recently. This really is an exceptional novel.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King
Space Wolf: The Second Omnibus - William King, Lee Lightner
A great set of stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, following Ragnar on a heart-stopping journey as he rises through the ranks of the Space Wolves.
Vitals - Greg Bear
A story about bacteria, the Soviet Union and people attempting to find eternal youth. Not convinced? I thought it was great!
There are some more I have read recently, including more from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, zombies and other near future sci-fi. But I’ll leave them for later.
18 Jul 2011
Just a quick post about something I did a long while ago (but have recently updated).
Ethernet Cable Wiring
It’s a guide on making Ethernet cables I created a while ago, parts of it can be used as handouts or part of an information pack for students. It has proven quite useful and attempts to walk people through a ‘correct’ way to make cables. I sourced information from a couple of websites, including a great article here.