Next, I tested the installer to make sure it was signed correctly. You do that in Terminal using the spctl command:

sudo spctl -a -v --type install /Users/test/Desktop/MyInstaller.pkg
Password:
/Users/test/Desktop/MyInstaller.pkg: accepted source=Developer ID


Now I ran the package on both a 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 machine. Both of these OS versions have Gatekeeper. The package ran correctly and showed that the signing certificate was correct.

Now, to be certain I ran the package again on a 10.6.8 machine and a 10.7.4 machine since neither of these have Gatekeeper.

On the 10.7.4 machine I get a certificate error warning. It says my certificate isn’t signed by a trusted source and do I want to trust it. Looking at the certificate chain it all seems correct. Running a signed Cisco installer on the same system does not generate the same error, even though the root signing CA is exactly the same. The installer works but has that disturbing error message.

On a 10.6.8 machine the installer runs without a certificate warning but clicking on the cert button in the installer window says the same thing as the 10.7.4 machine, that it isn’t signed by a trusted source.

Cutting to the chase, the issue is with signing the installer using the GUI version of PackageMaker. It works just fine for 10.7.5 and up machines but gives all those errors below that. To get your signed installer to work on all versions of the OS you need to use the productsign tool at the command line. These instructions assume that you’ve already installed your Developer ID certificates.

Use the following steps to do that:

1. Use the GUI version of PackageMaker to generate your installer but leave it unsigned.
2. Run the following command to sign that package:
   productsign --sign "Developer ID Installer: My Company" /Users/test/Desktop/MyInstaller.pkg /Users/test/Desktop/Signed/MyInstaller.pkg
   Note:If you are signing an older style non-distribution package it will give you the following error:
   Could not find appropriate signing identity for "Developer ID Installer: My Company". An application signing identity (not an installer identity) is required for signing bundle-style products.

   If you get that error use the following format instead of the one listed above:

   productsign --sign "Developer ID Application: My Company" /Users/test/Desktop/MyInstaller.pkg /Users/test/Desktop/Signed/MyInstaller.pkg

To test if you have successfully signed the package use the spctl command:

sudo spctl -a -v --type install /Users/test/Desktop/Signed/MyInstaller.pkg
/Users/test/Desktop/Signed/MyInstaller.pkg: accepted source=Developer ID


Mountain Lion 101 OS X Support Essentials

Mountain Lion 201 OS Server Essentials 10.8

If you have Java on your Mac you need to make sure you have updated to the latest Java update from Apple to patch this issue. The easiest way is to just run Software Update on your Mac and get the latest updates from Apple. You can download them manually as well from Apple:

• Java for OS X Lion 2012-001
• Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7

If you are concerned that you might already be infected F-Secure has some excellent instructions on how to find out here. The Applescript below will run the commands referenced in the F-Secure article to do a quick and dirty check. If everything comes back clean it will tell you. If it comes back as possibly infected it will direct you (or your user) to the website for more detailed information.

I’m posting it as a script file for download here:
Flashback Checker Script

Or you can copy the code from here and paste it into AppleScript Editor to run:

Code block

--see if this entry exists.  If not an error will occur and be trapped
try
	do shell script "defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info  LSEnvironment"
	--set this variable if this entry exists
	set LSE to "true"
on error errmsg
	--set this variable if the error contains the message "does not exist"
	if errmsg contains "does not exist" then
		set LSE to "false"
	end if
end try
--search Firefox for infections
try
	do shell script "defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info  LSEnvironment"
	--set this variable if this entry exists
	set FLSE to "true"
on error errmsg
	--set this variable if the error contains the message "does not exist"
	if errmsg contains "does not exist" then
		set FLSE to "false"
	end if
end try
--see if this entry exists.  If not an error will occur and be trapped
try
	do shell script "defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES"
	set DLib to "true"
on error errmsg
	--set this variable if the error contains the message "does not exist"
	if errmsg contains "does not exist" then
		set DLib to "false"
	end if
end try
--if all variables are false then the machine isn't infected
if LSE is "false" and DLib is "false" and FLSE is "false" then
	display dialog "You are not infected with Flashback"
	--if any variable is true the machine may be infected and needs closer inspection
else if LSE is "true" or DLib is "true" or FLSE is "true" then
	display dialog "You may have the Flashback infection" & return & "Go to following URL for more information:" & return & return & "http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan-downloader_osx_flashback_i.shtml"
end if

This is a great service for laptop users. Now you can have those hourly snapshots created no matter where you are. So, if you make some changes to a document while you’re away those changes will still be added to your Time Machine backup.

To enable these local snapshots you have use the new command-line tool for Time Machine named tmutil.

To enable local snapshots:

sudo tmutil enablelocal

To disable them AND clear all the local snapshots:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

You can confirm that you’ve enabled local snapshots by opening System Preferences > Time Machine and looking for the line circled in the image.

The tmutil utility has a bunch of other useful commands that allow you to enable or disable backups, start and stop backups, choose a new disk, etc. Type man tmutil to see the whole list. I can see this tool being used by lots of system administrators in scripts.

Apple also has a nice KB article explaining this feature here

The technique is basically the same in iTunes as well as on your device:

1. Click on the iTunes Store
2. Click the Purchased link on the far right
3. Pick your content (Music, Books, Apps, etc.)
4. Hover over the item you want to hide until you see the “X”
5. Click the “X” to hide that purchase

Here are the links to the Apple KB articles on both the iTunes and Mac App stores and how to hide the unwanted apps.

iTunes Store: Hiding and unhiding purchases

Mac App Store: Hiding and unhiding purchases

This script lets you toggle the view on and off. So, you can turn it on, do what you need and then turn it off.

Code block

try
	set toggleView to (do shell script "defaults read com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles")
on error
	set toggleView to "NO"
end try
if toggleView is "NO" or toggleView is "0" then
	set br to display dialog "Showing hidden files is disabled." & return & "Would you like to enable it?" buttons {"Yes", "No"} default button {"No"}
	set theAnswer to the button returned of br
	if theAnswer is "Yes" then
		do shell script "defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES"
		do shell script "killall Finder"
		display dialog "Showing hidden files has been enabled" buttons {"Ok"} giving up after 5
	end if
else
	if toggleView is "YES" or toggleView is "1" then
		set br to display dialog "Showing hidden files is enabled." & return & "Would you like to disable it?" buttons {"Yes", "No"} default button {"Yes"}
		set theAnswer to the button returned of br
		if theAnswer is "Yes" then
			do shell script "defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO"
			do shell script "killall Finder"
			display dialog "Showing hidden files has been disabled" buttons {"Ok"} giving up after 5
		end if
	end if
end if

Copy the code into AppleScript Editor and then save it out as an application. Double clicking on it will bring up a dialog box telling you the current state of viewing hidden files and gives you the option of switching it. Since you have to restart the Finder after you make this change you’ll see the Finder quit and restart.

One of the very cool things about it is that you can use a URL to initiate a FaceTime call. As described in this Mac OS X Hints article just use the following syntax:

• facetime://appleid
• facetime://email@address
• facetime://phone# as a URL in Safari’s address bar.

Since you can use a URL that means you can use AppleScript to connect to a session or Automator to even schedule and initiate a call using iCal Alarms.

The only line you need is this:

Code block

open location "facetime://joe@emailaddress.com"

Obviously you can use any of the URL syntaxes listed above in place of the email address. Save it as a script/application/workflow and you’re ready to chat!

The big issue with backing up this way, as with any backup, is getting people to do it and do it regularly. To backup your Address Book all you need to do it copy the /Users/”user name”/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder in each users home directory. Simple, direct and easy. But you may have noticed that when you do a manual backup via the Address Book application you get a file with the “.abbu” extension. That’s just the AddressBook folder renamed and getting that extension. The beauty of having this file is when you want to restore your Address Book via the menu you can just point to this file. Otherwise you have to drag the backed up folder to the original spot. Again, not hard to do but some users have problems doing things that go outside of clicking on a menu item.

So, to back up your Address Book and put it in nice “.abbu” file for easy restores just do this:

Code block

filedate=`/bin/date "+%m-%d-%y"`
cp -R "/Users/username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook" "/Users/username/Documents/Address Book Backups/Address Book Backup $filedate.abbu"

Obviously you change the “username” section to the name of the home directory. Also, you can change the backup folder to what ever you want. This script just appends the current date to the backup so you can keep multiple backups if needed.

To run this you have a bunch of options:

1. You can run it via cron or launchd. Just put the two lines together and seperated by a “;”.
   You can create the launchd item here – http://plist.spotmac.de/
2. You can run it as an Automator iCal plug-in. Just drag over the “Run Shell Script” action and paste in the script. Then schedule it via iCal.
3. You can save it as a script and run it from what ever automation application you prefer.

osascript /Users/Shared/disk_check.scpt

Code block

set mysubject to "Disk Usage Report"
set myrecipient to "sysadmin@example.com"
--get the amount of free space
set dSize to (do shell script "df -h / | grep %") as text
--pull out the percent used from the result
set theTotal to word 6 in dSize as number
--if the total used space is 95% or more put up a warning. Comment out if running the email section
if theTotal is greater than or equal to 95 then
	display dialog "Your disk is " & theTotal & "% full"
end if
--comment out this section if no email is desired.
set mybody to ("Free Space: " & theTotal & "%")
do shell script ("echo \"" & mybody & "\" | mail -s \"" & mysubject & "\" " & myrecipient)

Click here to download a copy: Disk Check script

Open Terminal and type cd /private/etc/apache2/users. Inside the “users” folder will be conf files for each of the users with accounts on the machine. So, if we have a user with the short name of “joe” on the machine there will be a file in there named “joe.conf”.

To edit this file you need to have root permissions. So open it using sudo. I prefer using pico as my editor but use whichever works for you. The command below assumes you are already in the “users” folder.

sudo pico joe.conf

You’ll see something like this:

Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all



Navigate down to the line Options Indexes MultiViews. Carefully delete the Indexes part of the line and save the file. Now restart Apache, either by going to System Preferences and turning off and then back on Web Sharing, or at the command line by typing sudo apachectl restart.

Now navigate to a directory in your “Sites” folder that doesn’t have an index file. You should get a “403 No permissions” error unless you specify a file. Much more secure. Note that you’ll need to do this individually for each account on the machine.

I’ve tested this with Snow Leopard and I’m betting it will work with Leopard. I’m not sure if versions of the OS below 10.5 support this feature.