Back online...

2013-01-21T22:37:00-08:00

It seems all I do any more is migrate things that used to “run” at my house to externally hosted services.
After @glarizza mentioned octopress to me and subsequently posted an article on it, I was hooked (mlk holiday helped as well). I had screwed around with wordpress for a while but spent more time securing it then posting to it. This solution allows me to use all the tools that I am using day to day (git + github,vim + markdown), and also has a decent syntax highlighting engine. I still have quite a few things at my house to administer but luckily between google apps and github pages my little Hak Nam on the web should be a more stable then an old G4 in my office with a record count of 6 dead RAID members over the years could ever be.

Using augeas with Facter

2013-01-21T15:25:00-08:00

I recently needed to demo how to use augeas with facter. This needs to be optimised to not just be Augeas::NONE but this allows you to have augeas parse the file rather then ruby.

Facter.add(:default_realm) do setcode do begin require 'augeas' aug = Augeas::open('/', nil, Augeas::NONE) default_realm = aug.get('/files/etc/krb5.conf/libdefaults/default_realm') aug.close default_realm rescue Exception Facter.debug('ruby-augeas not available') end end end

Confine a dynamic fact using Facter

2013-01-21T14:44:00-08:00

While in training this week, a coworker was trying to figure out how to confine a fact using a another fact when using facter. This is quite easy using confine in the Facter.add block however when you add dynamic facts in the mix , that block is always executed after you wanted it confined. For instance if you have some yum based fact that dynamically generates many more facts and wanted to confine it only to RedHat, you can simply do the following:

if Facter.osfamily == 'RedHat' IO.popen('yum list installed').readlines.collect do |line| array = line.split Facter.add("yum_#{array[0]}_version") do setcode do "#{array[1]}" end end end end

Example NSStatusItem

2013-01-20T21:42:00-08:00

I created a sample NSStatusItem Application for my presentation at Mac Tech Conference - 2011 It can be found here

Documentation for MacSysAdmin 2012

2012-12-31T21:30:00-08:00

Documentation is now available from my two sessions at MacSysAdmin 2012.

Server AD Migration and Integration Video
Server AD Migration and Integration Slides

Workstation AD Migration and integration Video

The Cocoa wrapper tool I built can be found here:
Download Winnebago

Simple Little Warranty Parser

2012-11-11T23:01:00-08:00

if anyone is interested I have a python prototype of @glarriza’s warranty ruby script that spits all keys out as a dict I would have used his but I am writing something in python that needed this directly and I did not want to call an external command.

I really should be parsing here but I was in a hurry.

#!/usr/bin/python import ast import plistlib import urllib2 import subprocess system_profiler = "/usr/sbin/system_profiler" # Generic system_profiler parser def systemReport(): global spx spx = {} # This is our key value schema SPHardwareDataType = { 'serial': 'serial_number', } _dataTypes = { 'SPHardwareDataType': SPHardwareDataType, } dataTypes = _dataTypes.keys() # run the system_profiler command with data types arguments = [system_profiler,"-xml"] + dataTypes getspx = subprocess.Popen(arguments, stdout=subprocess.PIPE) spxOut, err = getspx.communicate() rootObject = plistlib.readPlistFromString(spxOut) # Parse datatype top level keys below for array in rootObject: for _dataType in _dataTypes: if array['_dataType'] == _dataType: _dataTypeSchema = _dataTypes[_dataType] for key in _dataTypeSchema: for item in array['_items']: # add a key to our dict per the schema spx[key] = item[_dataTypeSchema[key]] # generate a xml plist so NSPropertyListSerialization is overkill here systemReport() # Generate the URL by concatenating the string url = 'http://selfsolve.apple.com/warrantyChecker.do?sn=' + spx['serial'] + '&country=USA' request = urllib2.Request(url) httpResult = urllib2.urlopen(request) # remove the "^null" string to make tuple with dict inside warranty = ast.literal_eval(httpResult.read()[4:]) # Just an example of how to parse the data #for key in warranty: print "%s\t%s" % (key,warranty[key]) print plistlib.writePlistToString(warranty)

System-Type An IOReg POC CLI

2011-11-09T14:13:00-08:00

I just posted a little command line here

This little binary will tell you if you have a Laptop or Desktop. It reads this value using the system-type in IOKit (IOPlatformExpertDevice). You can parse this value your self using the ioreg (-l) command but Its not formatted well, so I decided to make this as its a pretty common request. For instance I once had a school district that wanted to turn off wireless on all Desktops as they were having MYNAME(37) bonjour name conflict issues.

There is a little example.command shell script to show you the two ways you would use this in your scripts. laptops are value 2 (exit 1) and Desktops are value 1 (exit 0). The exit values allow you to use standard logic built-in to run the command and use its exit value. Or if you think thats lame you can parse the text. To each there own but I like exit values

Known Issues: As I recall this does not cover PowerPC machines, but I have not seen an intel that does not use this value. Maybe iPad 3 will be 3 ;)

To Do: I will make a little installer for it as some point and put it in /usr/local/bin/system-type Could use some options as well such as controlling behaviour Maybe XML output, and put some other values?

European Macintosh System Administrators Meeting 2011

2011-03-04T20:38:00-08:00

Well its official , I will be speaking at the European Macintosh System Administrators Meeting 2011 in Göteborg, Sweden. Check out the details here.

Fun With Schlage Link and Python

2011-03-01T13:54:00-08:00

So I have a Schlage LiNK Wireless Keypad Entry Lever Lock Starter Kit System. I am trying to take the whole thing apart call by call but until I am ready to post that I wanted a quick easy way to interface with the system in a semi cool way. Basically I wanted anyone who types the code in the door to hear “Welcome home” $First $last. So I decided that I could at least in the time being before I figure out Zwaves command classes, just check my email (Special notification Inbox) and parse the name from there. This works pretty well, I mark it as read so I don’t see it the second time around and then set it on a launchd job. Though really you could use this to run any command based on a special subject line, so its a quick easy example of something sorta cool. I have not had a chance to make a youtube video of it, but I will when its a little more sexy ( and I get the arduino hooked up to the metal skull servos, yes I am totally not joking that I have a metal skull that I am teaching to speak).

#!/usr/bin/python import imaplib import string, random import StringIO, rfc822 import email, sys import os from datetime import datetime, timedelta import plistlib SERVER = "mail.wallcity.org" USER = "home" PASSWORD = "mypassword" lastcheck = datetime.now () print lastcheck # connect to server server = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(SERVER) # login server.login(USER, PASSWORD) server.select() #typ, data = server.search(None, 'ALL') typ, data = server.search(None, '(FROM "alerts@schlagelink.com")','UNSEEN') for num in data[0].split(): resp, data = server.fetch(num, "(RFC822)") text = data[0][1] file = StringIO.StringIO(text) message = rfc822.Message(file) subject = message['Subject'] if subject == 'Schlage LiNK Alert': #body = server.fetch(num,"(UID BODY[TEXT])") body = server.fetch(num,"(BODY[TEXT])") imaptolken = body[1] bodytolken = imaptolken[0] textbody = bodytolken[1] words = textbody.split() first_name = words[8] print words last_name = words[9] cmd = '/usr/bin/say' + ' ' + 'Welcome home ' + first_name + ' ' + last_name # Turn the volume up set_volume_command='/usr/bin/osascript -e \'set volume 10\'' os.system(set_volume_command) os.system(cmd) server.logout()

Fun With Deploy Studio and Python

2011-02-24T14:37:00-08:00

While thinking about my previous post , I wrote a quick example on how to interact with another plist formatted transactional system: Deploy Studio. Today we were running into an issue with using some post renaming scripts that DeployStudio did not know about. So ideally I just wanted to make sure that as names of machines changed , deploy studio was notified for an subseqent restores that took place. To accomplish this I took a look at the Post Methods aviable in DP and was able to get the whole proof of concept built without calling any external commands. I am going to probobly add quite a bit to this (such as pushing ARD fields ) but here is my proof of concept.

#!/usr/bin/python # Created by zack -at- wallcity.org # Grabs the systems hostname and updates the record in DeployStudios database. import sys # The exits string import plistlib # The property list library import urllib,urllib2,base64 # Our URL handlers from uuid import getnode as get_mac from socket import gethostname # Get our Mac Address mac = get_mac() username = "deploystudioadmin" # The Deploy Studio username password = "f00b4rb4z" # The Deploy Studio password server = "some.server.com" # The DP instance to communicate with port = "60443" # The DP server progID = "https://" # The start of the URL mac = "%X" % get_mac() # Convert DecHex and produce "001f6bf8de5e" mac = mac.lower() # Ensure lower #macCol = [mac[i:i+2] for i in range(0,len(mac),2)] #macCol = ':'.join(mac) request = urllib2.Request(progID + server + ":" + port + "/computers/get/entry?id=" + mac ) base64string = base64.encodestring('%s:%s' % (username, password)).replace('\n', '') request.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % base64string) httpResult = urllib2.urlopen(request) deployStudioXML = httpResult.read() print "Found Mac Address: " + mac print "Found HostName: " + gethostname() plist = plistlib.readPlistFromString(deployStudioXML) # Set the values for key in plist: plist[key]['cn'] = gethostname() plist[key]['dstudio-hostname'] = gethostname() rootXMLPlist = plistlib.writePlistToString(plist[key]) print rootXMLPlist submitRequest = urllib2.Request(progID + server + ":" + port + "/computers/set/entry?id=" + mac, rootXMLPlist, {'Content-type': 'text/xml'}) base64string = base64.encodestring('%s:%s' % (username, password)).replace('\n', '') submitRequest.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % base64string) submitResult = urllib2.urlopen(submitRequest) submitResultXML = submitResult.read() sys.exit(0)