Folks,

This newsletter is a week late due to a trio of software releases. A lot of work went into these and I hope that you find them useful.

MOSXSWebPassword 1.5 Release

This is the official release version of MOSXSWebPassword. I fixed a few bugs from the beta — one Property key was misspelled ("entryPage" should be "entryPageName"), the success page redirect now uses a relative URL which should give you the correct destination protocol (http vs. https) and host by default, and the postupgrade script should do a better job of restarting the application.

Grab the release version from <http://ps-enable.com/software/MOSXSWebPassword1.5.dmg>

PolicyBanner 1.0

A while back on afp548.com, Joel Rennich posted an article about the bannersample project that ships with the XCode tools. While it's a neat idea, to quote a buddy of mine, "we looked at it, and it's kinda neat, but somebody needs to make it really work." That somebody was me. You can customize it by editing the Policy.rtf file inside the package, replacing the logo.gif file, and editing the timeout parameter in the info.plist file.

Grab it from <http://ps-enable.com/software/PolicyBanner1.0.dmg>.

File Distributor

If you need to replace every instance of a particular file inside a directory structure (e.g., distribute a set of bookmarks to every user's home directory), you can use my File Distributor application. You put in the path to the file that you want to use as a replacement, the name of the file that you want replaced, and the path to the folder where you want to start the replacement process. You can do this by typing it in, drag and drop, or selecting from a standard file dialog.

Grab it from <http://ps-enable.com/software/FileDistributor1.0.dmg>.

Addition to /usr/bin/screen

Joe Moreno (the guy responsible for getting me a job at Apple in the first place) sent me another cool thing that you can do with /usr/bin/screen — you can use it to emulate a serial terminal. In his words:

I've ... used screen to emulate Hyperterminal or Procomm when sending commands to my GSM modems:

screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1 19200

(connect to device KeySerial1 at 19,200 baud).

Joe also asked, "Isn't there also a way to have multiple users attach to the same screen session?" I looked into it and you can do it. One person starts a screen session, and then someone else can execute:

screen -x <screen number>

Both people need to be logged in as the same user on the target machine. There is a way to use ACLs to give multiple users access to the same screen session, but it's too complex to get into here.

Server Remote Setup Recovery

If you are setting up a server remotely and your Server Assistant crashes, you won't be able to reconnect to the server to start the setup process again. To recover from this, ssh into the server and delete the file:

/System/Library/ServerSetup/.RemoteSetupInProcess

You can now reconnect using Server Assistant.


--Paul