Making Shared Configuration Profiles Unique

Several people in the community have, from time to time, shared Configuration Profiles via Dropbox links, forum posts, or github. Nick McSpadden has graciously shared a fairly large collection.

There are a few problems one is faced with after copying so many profiles from someone else this way.

1. The top-level PayloadIdentifier is not ours
2. The PayloadUUIDs are no longer unique

The first problem is easily solved with existing tools.

sed -i '' 's/org\.sacredsf/org\.glenbrook225/' ./*.mobileconfig

The second problem…not so much.

I wrote a little something to create new UUIDs for the configs.

It works but it needs two things that I can think of.

1. the nested PayloadIdentifiers should update. I'm thinking something like Apple does but without the text. Maybe formatted like so: "new-top-UUID.new-payload-UUID"
2. sometimes the outer-level moves from the top of the file to the bottom. I don't know if this is because dictionaries in python have no order or some other reason but it makes them less human-readable.

Voice Updates repo_sync Stats

After Tim Sutton hopped into ##osx-server and freaked everyone out yesterday afternoon I decided to gather some before and after info.

Before:

df -H

Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/vgpool-lv_var  476G  239G  215G  53% /var

After repo_sync run (deprecated pkgs NOT purged):

/dev/mapper/vgpool-lv_var  476G  276G  179G  61% /var

I ran the repo_sync by hand before leaving work for the evening in a screen session. Here is the time info. YMMV depends on bandwidth etc. etc.

repo_sync run ended

real    189m24.841s

user    7m26.358s

sys     7m15.786s

There were 22 deprecated pkgs that were not voices cached (mostly xprotect etc.) I did a 

repoutil --purge-product all-deprecated

Which removed those 22 updates. This left only the voices from 2013-07-24, 2012-05-13, and 2012-03-16 as deprecated items.

Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/vgpool-lv_var  476G  274G  181G  61% /var

I added all the new voices in one shot with

repoutil --add-product all stable

Then got rid of the deprecated ones without having to remove them from the catalogs via

repoutil --purge-product all-deprecated --force

This finally brought the final disk usage to:

Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/vgpool-lv_var  476G  222G  232G  49% /var


tl;dr You need a few hours and about 37GB to download all the new voices. But the new voices alone actually take up less space than the old ones did.

Yosemite SUCatalog Size

When I noticed repo_sync downloading all the OS X voices again I got mildly concerned about storage space.

Luckily, I learned that lesson once already and /var is mounted on top of an LVM storage pool in the Ubuntu VM that runs reposado. After a quick 'df -h' I switched over to ##osx-server and asked about the yoyo's storage requirements. gneagle suggested I do some investigation on my own and publish what I discovered.

I decided to stop the repo_sync run for the time being and disable the cronjob.

Later, I got curious and whipped this up in an iPython notebook after briefly taking a look at the catalog itself.

#!/usr/bin/python

import plistlib
import urllib2

catalog_url = 'http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog'
total_size = 0.0

yoyo_sucatalog = urllib2.urlopen(catalog_url).read()
yoyo_plist = plistlib.readPlistFromString(yoyo_sucatalog)
yoyo_prod = yoyo_plist['Products']

for k in yoyo_prod:
    for item in yoyo_prod[k]['Packages']:
        total_size += item['Size']

print str(total_size / 1073741824) + ' GiB'
print str(total_size / 1000000000) + ' GB'

And the output?

128.361939469 GiB
137.827583018 GB

So there you have it. Approximately 130-140 Gigs (for varying definitions of Gig).

There is probably some insignificant amount of overhead in everything that comes down from the server too. *shrug*

Looks like I need to add a drive to the VM and expand the pool. :)

munki is so damn cool

This post only exists because twitter's character count is too small…

but FYI munki is so damn cool.

The following items will be installed or upgraded:
        + duti-1.5.2
            set default applications for doc types
        + duti_launchagent-1.0
            runs duti at login on dir /Library/Glenbrook225/duti
        + AcrobatXProCS6-10.1.1
        + AcrobatUpd-10.1.10
        + duti_acrobatpro-1.1
            sets Acrobat Pro as editor for pdf at login via duti and duti launchagent

Only one of those things was actually in the manifest.

NICE.

pkgbuild many MAS apps with bash

I wanted to quickly create pkgs for iWork and iLife from apps with an institutional ID receipt because I am experimenting with AutoDMG and Lightning.

It takes a bit of time for some of these to build and I didn't want to wait around so here is what I did…

Start an array by just typing array=( into the command line and then hitting <return>

admin_dist@golden ~ $ array=( 

Drag and drop the apps into the Terminal window hitting <return> after each

> /Applications/GarageBand.app 

> /Applications/iMovie.app 

> /Applications/iPhoto.app 

> /Applications/Keynote.app 

> /Applications/Numbers.app 

> /Applications/Pages.app

When they are all in finish off the array

> ) 

Now for the good stuff.  :D

For each path in the array

admin_dist@golden ~ $ for path in "${array[@]}"; do

 greedily chomp from the front to the last / using parameter expansion

> app_name="${path##*/}"

chomp from the end to the first period

> name="${app_name%.*}"

get the version of the thing at $path using command substitution and an assignment

> version=$(defaults read "${path}"/Contents/Info CFBundleShortVersionString)

build it with a pretty name

> pkgbuild --component "${path}" $HOME/Desktop/"${name}-${version}".pkg
> done

This will give you nice installer packages on the Desktop of the form "GarageBand-10.0.2.pkg".

Here is gist with a full script instead of interactive command line entries.

Quick Tip - updatejournal.plist

I just migrated from an old 13" MacBook Pro to a new 13" Air.

I quickly found out that Migration Assistant in Mavericks over Thunderbolt is mostly broken.

Not a problem for me, I know how to use rsync with --exclude!

After getting my user directories moved over I found something rather annoying. MAS still showed that I had installed a bunch of updates, particularly developer seeds, that I most certainly was not running on this new machine.

I poked around for a few minutes with pkgutil, ls'd a bunch of folders, poked & prodded until finally throwing my hands up in exasperation.

Where the heck is this coming from!?!

I methodically started going through my User-level Library (as I now knew the updates only showed up for my standard user and not the admin) and found the offender.

After banishing this annoying little bugger to to the Trash my update list is free and clear.

Install bash 4.2.45 in 3 minutes or less

So here we go.

I set PS1 to '\t \$ ' in order to document the time required to do this. Everything was typed by hand and done from memory except a short alt-tab to nvALT to ensure proper numbering for curl'ing the patches.

• md src
• curl -OL http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/bash/bash-4.2.tar.gz
• tar xzf bash-4.2.tar.gz
• cd bash-4.2
• md patches
• curl -L "http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/gnu/bash/bash-4.2-patches/bash42-0[01-45]" -o "bash42-0#1"

• cd ..
• for patchfile in ./patches/*; do patch -p0 <"$patchfile"; done

• ./configure
• make -j4
• sudo make install

To wrap up simply edit /etc/shells like in my previous post and chsh -s on your user.