Tag Archives: Mac

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macOS Mojave Update

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Apple released a new OS called Mojave on September 24, 2018. For Community Network customers, we are not yet recommending Mojave and High Sierra is still our standard/recommended OS. However, we will leave Mojave in place on any new computers that come with it already installed.

SCEP anti-virus is not officially supported for Mojave yet. While SCEP seems to work, it causes very slow performance on some computers, particularly for a few minutes after login. Until Microsoft releases a new SCEP client (or other replacement) or we find a way to resolve the performance issue, we probably won’t recommend Mojave.

That said, 166 CN customers have already upgraded to Mojave, and most of them have not reported issues. We do support Mojave, and will do our best to resolve issues customers bring to us.

Please research issues before recommending a downgrade back to High Sierra.

Relevant documentation for your review:

Base, Bench, Community Network, Field

Changes to Build Bench Build Procedures

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Due to reports of build inconsistencies on mac computers. The Build Bench Process has been changed. So what is changing?

  • Macs are moving back to being imaged by Deploy Studio. The process is now essentially a two step process for the basic build.  1: Image. 2: Install casper. I made it as easy and foolproof as I could. With the move to deploy studio, all of the enrollment policies in Casper have been changed so they do not install software automatically. This will make the execution of the quick add package a lot quicker.
  • The builds will no longer include department specific user templates as certain updates have changed the process and now require a complete overhaul to continue it. Which is too much maintenance for something so small.
  • I spoke to Angela, Lucas, Sam and Patrick and Office 2016 for mac is now on the image. Through our testing it has been good, and we feel it is important to get the online archive functionality to our mac users.
  • For macs to be joined to domain: As a reminder, they should only be joined in special circumstances where there are a lot of users using the machine. The machine should only be joined to the ONID domain. You can use the casper policy “CN – Onid – Domain Bind”
  • For Field Techs building macs in their free time. We ask that it be done at the build bench using deploy studio for consistency sake. Using our process completely. Once the rest of CS moves to Milne we can have a couple of ports available for the field techs that can access deploy studio. But as for now all mac computers should be built using the deploy studio process in the Milne 120 build bench.

Also as a reminder: iWork is to be only installed on machines after Late 2013. There is a smart group in casper that indicates whether or not they are eligible for free iWork. If their machine is not in that smart group, the customer must purchase the software from the app store. Under no circumstances should we be installing the software on machines that are not eligible.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to let me know!

Base, Bench, Community Network, Field

Mac Printing to ISCS-PrintQ

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For printers that have moved to the new core we’re currently updating printers manually on Macs. At this point we’re using the following process to set up printing to the new print server:

https://sharepoint.oregonstate.edu/sites/tss/Documentation/Internal%20Policies,%20Procedures%20and%20Information/Projects%20and%20Migrations/Mac%20OSX%20Adding%20a%20Print%20Queue.docx

For the SMB URL, use iscs-printq.tss.oregonstate.edu for the server and the queue name listed in inventory. For example:

smb://iscs-printq.tss.oregonstate.edu/KAd-108-Ricoh-MP-201

I will be working with James to automate this process through Casper but this is the process for now should someone call in. Alternatively, if this process doesn’t work, the old LPD method still works with the printer’s new IP address but please use that as a last resort.

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OneDrive for Business cache issue

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Problem:

When OneDrive for Business (ODFB) starts, you see the following error message:  “A problem occurred while accessing the Office Document Cache.  Do you want to repair this problem?”

Regardless of whether you choose Yes or No, the error keeps coming up. Also, on the Mac the computer becomes extremely slow, with CPU pegged.

Solution:

  1. Close ODFB, close all Office applications, and close OneNote.
  2. Delete the “OfficeFileCache” folder and its contents.
  3. Restart ODFB. You should not get errors this time.

On Windows, you might have to work a bit harder to close ALL processes that are accessing the cache folder.

Windows details here: http://www.7tutorials.com/fix-problems-microsoft-office-document-cache-being-corrupted

Mac details here: https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/153/t/298682

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Mac Self Service

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A couple of things about the Self Service app that is deployed to the Macs.

In case you have not looked at the Self Service app, please jump on a Mac and have a quick look so that you can see what it looks like.

  • Anybody who wants to use Self Service will need to use their ONID credentials to log in to Self Service (do not qualify your username with onid\ as Casper does not like domain qualifications).
  • If a customer is having trouble accessing Self Service and they have their ONID credentials correct, the machine is most likely not collected in Casper, in which case, the machine will need to have the QuickAdd package run on it.
  • A customer will only be able to see whatever packages are available for the machine that they are logging into Self Service from. Package deployments are assigned per machine, not per user, so if a person can see the OS X Mavericks installer from their 10.7 machine, but not from their 10.9 machine, it’s because the package is not assigned to be deployed to their 10.9 machine.

Now, on a different note, CJ and I have already fielded a few comments about the way the deployment of the Self Service dock icon happened. While the Self Service app has been deployed to the Macs for several months, we only started talking about deploying the dock icon yesterday as we felt we finally had enough software available in Self Service to make it worth the customers’ while (nobody wants to go shopping in a store with empty shelves). While we were excited to make the Self Service app more obvious to the customers, we should have sent a notice before we started messing around with deployment of the dock icon. I was the one who activated the deployment policy and I apologize for any confusion or unnecessary questions that it may have generated as a result.

So. If we deploy something in the future that is going to be directly visible to the customer or change their user experience in an overt manner, we will follow established procedure by sending a notice to the customers and deploying on Tuesday nights in conjunction with Patch Tuesday updates.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

James Dudzik