Configure L2TP VPN Server on Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite
As Apple have removed PPTP VPN support from macOS Sierra (10.12 and iOS 10) I'm changing clients over to L2TP over IPSec VPNs instead. Once the VPN server is...
Read post →Our thinking
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Technical notes and observations from years of supporting creative businesses on Mac.
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Get system specs on an HP Server
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows doesn't really have anything quite like the System Information app on macOS. If you've got an HP server however, you can...
Read post →Find (and delete) duplicate files
I've had issues in the past where a Kerio Connect mail server talking to Apple Mail can somehow end up duplicating hundreds or even thousands of emails in ma...
Read post →Easily create and install Launch Daemons on macOS or OS X
I recently needed to have a script execute on a daily basis - previously this would have been a task for cron however it's been deprecated (yet still all the...
Read post →Find Large Items in Office 365 Mailboxes
Find the largest items in Office 365 mailboxes by connecting with PowerShell and running Get-MailboxFolderStatistics to export folder sizes and top subjects.
Read post →Recursively Propagate Permissions on a Synology NAS with synoacltool
Synology DSM lets you do some pretty complex things with permissions on files and folders, however occasionally things can get a bit mixed up and it's diffic...
Read post →Higher Quality options to Reduce PDF File Size in Preview.app on macOS / OS X
Apple's built-in Preview app has long had a way that you can reduce the size of a PDF by recompressing and downsampling the images in the PDF. Simply open a...
Read post →Disable Azure AD users from having to set up a PIN on Windows 10
Stop Azure AD joined Windows 10 devices prompting for a PIN by turning off Passport for Work via the Azure portal and Intune device management.
Read post →Give an Azure AD user Local Administrator user privileges on Windows 10
Grant a Microsoft Entra ID user local administrator rights on a Windows 10 machine with a single net localgroup command from an elevated CMD prompt.
Read post →Fix file timestamps with dates in the future on OS X or Unix/Linux
I recently needed to fix a heap of files with invalid timestamps for a client to sync between two sites. The issue was that some files had modification dates...
Read post →Issues authenticating Windows 10 to OS X/macOS with Server.app
Ever since Apple were forced to ditch Samba due to their changing the licensing to GPL3, we've been stuck with a second-rate SMB implementation on OS X and S...
Read post →Product Review: Bidsketch - easily and quickly send out proposals to clients.
I've been trialling Bidsketch as a more efficient way to get written proposals to my clients. I don't write a huge number of proposals, and am prone to reinv...
Read post →Troubleshooting: Fetch a web page as Googlebot
I've had a couple of clients come to me recently after their WordPress site was pwned. Sometimes you're able to use a tool like Wordfence to clean it up and...
Read post →Reverse SSH to a server behind a firewall
I recently needed to establish an ad-hoc ssh connection to a server behind a firewall. I didn't control the firewall and couldn't get a port mapped through i...
Read post →Fix SMB Permissions on OS X Server for Newly Created Files and Folders
I don't know why it is, but SMB on OS X Server is slower and less reliable than the AFP that it replaces. Despite Apple making it the default for OS X to OS...
Read post →Set OS X Server to Deny SMB 3 Connections
Sometimes an OS X Server will have very poor SMB file sharing performance - whilst I haven't been able to ascertain with 100% certainty what causes it, somet...
Read post →Mount a Windows partition of an optical disc on OS X
Today I needed to install some software on a Windows server - the software only came on an optical disc and the Windows server didn't have an optical drive....
Read post →Change a Open Directory Group's GeneratedUID or UUID
I occasionally see OS X Server's Open Directory flip out, sometimes a simple repair of the LDAP databases seems to fix it, sometimes you need to go deeper. I...
Read post →Android adb on Mac OS X recognising Google Pixel C
I've had a bit of trouble getting a Google Pixel C to be recognised on my Mac - wasn't able to get it showing up in System Profiler and wasn't able to see it...
Read post →The Sennheiser Orpheus Experience or the day I went to a holistic health clinic to listen to the best headphones in the world.
Hurt. One song. Two definitive versions. Reznor's is painful, vivid, fresh and raw. Cash's is tempered by looking back from the vantage of time. https://soun...
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