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Create a Custom ISO image with your kickstart Install a couple of tools you'll need later on in this walkthrough. sudo yum install -y isomd5sum genisoimage Download a copy of the CentOS 7 minimal image from your preferred mirror. wget http://yum.tamu.edu/centos/7.6.1810/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1810.iso Create a directory to mount your source on and loop mount the downloaded iso. mkdir /tmp/bootiso mount -o loop CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1810.iso /tmp/bootiso Now create a working directory for you custom media. [Read More]

Configuring a Puppet Server lab Note This all started from a failed attempt to follow PluralSight's Puppet sysadmin course using Apache and Passenger. Ran into dependency issues which Ben Piper provided solutions for on his github page but beyond that continued to run into issues with the lab environment. I was more interested in getting a test environment up and running so I could start rapid prototyping our Puppet workflow, not infrastructure as that is already in place. [Read More]

While recently troubleshooting an issue with DEP enrollment initiation, I was given instructions on how to enable and capture mdm logs on new device during the Setup Assistant process. Networked machines would intermittently display the enrollment prompt at the Setup Assistant. The resultant logs from these steps should help you determine the source of DEP enrollment failure, network or otherwise. Steps to configure mdm logging: You will need a new or freshly imaged Macbook to test with. [Read More]

Inspired by the JNUC talk presented by James Smith last year, I set out to improve our current user onboarding experience. Currently we use DEP and custom scoping to trigger JAMF enrollment policies. This lead to a few issues as the policy triggers are contingent on manual steps being executed. As we know, anytime we introduce manual processes we open the door for mistakes and inaccuracies. Also, Luckily, we can leverage the @enrollment JAMF trigger to kick off onboarding policies and serve up a splash screen to give users feedback during the initial setup. [Read More]

With MacOS 10.13.4 came the addition of the -eraseinstall flag for the MacOS installer. Note that the following guide only pertains to machines on MacOS 10.13.4 or newer. This flag allows us to mimic the Erase all content and settings option from iOS, saving us from having to reimage via Internet Recovery or a boot image, target disk mode, etc. So first thing we need to do is ensure that all machines have the full MacOS High Sierra installer cached. [Read More]