252: Migrate Is Becoming A Trigger Word For Me

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up for same from Episode 223 "It's not you, it's me" about Mail notifications

-Sam follows up on his experience at the ACN Road Show in Santa Monica, CA

-Sam shares a story from one of our listeners that recovered a stolen MacBook Pro with assistance from the police department

-In working with a client, Joe discovers that Find My iPhone was off.  He also discussed enabling show last location, which is a handy feature.

-Sam tries to inject a new segment in the show, "Sam's travel corner"

-Jerry reminds us about taking a few moments to ask clients for an online review

-Jerry talks about an experience with a client that had a failed High Sierra upgrade - "macOS could not be installed on this computer" and used terminal to correct it:
diskutil list
diskutil umount force /dev/disk1
(Take note of your disk id. disk1 in my case)
diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1

-We reference Mike Bombich from Carbon Copy Cloner and an APFS issue that was found when dealing with sparse images:
https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data-on-apfs-formatted-disk-images

-Not to be outdone, Joe introduces yet another segment, "Joe's Kuriosity Korner"

-A client that politely declined Joe's monthly services plan ends up with an issue with data loss after a liquid spill and the Apple Store replaced hardware.  PsiMac to the rescue: had her order the hard drive from Backblaze. It contained a full copy of her home folder, which brought her data back.  Two fallout issues were Keychain related and the Photos library.  

-Sam has an issue with spotlight and Outlook 2016 and found a more recent support article to deal with the issue using the mdimport command.  This was a welcome new approach to removing and rebuilding the spotlight database:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2741535/outlook-for-mac-search-returns-no-results-and-task-items-are-not-displ

-A story you have to hear to believe - Joe's client has an issue with sending emails from Outlook and coming out as gibberish to receivers.  After upgrading from Outlook 2011 to 2016, the issue remained.  In the end, an errant carriage return in one of her contact names caused this formatting issue to occur.

"Just re-index it dude" 
-Apparently Sam

249: Live Show - A Series Of Unfortunate Events

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

Topics:

-Joe calls back to a 27" iMac hinge repair.  Sam & Joe have both used https://www.themachack.com to hold up the display.  But Joe references that Apple will reimburse customers with proof of repair.

-TI83 Calculator was Joe's calculator of choice in high school.  You can still get one on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI-83-Graphing-Calculator/dp/B00001N2QU

-The Jiggler was a handy program Jerry had used to keep FileVault moving along.  But unfortunately he has some follow up news regarding FileVault that wasn't so great.

-The team discusses fusion drives and weighing cost options for clients

-Joe introduces a new segment to the show, "Joe's Konspiracy Korner"
In this week's konspiracy, Joe throws around theories about a rash of errors on macOS computers. - "macOS could not be installed on your computer.  The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged"
Some solutions offered from Stack Exchange - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/299808/high-sierra-the-path-system-installation-packages-osinstall-mpkg-appears-to-b

-Sam got bleeped! Guess the banned word and we'll give you credit on the show!

-Sam brings up a scenario where a client lost her iPhone with Find My iPhone off and a lost iTunes backup password.  Jerry offers a possible solution in LCOM Soft:
https://www.elcomsoft.com/

-Some Synology follow up from Sam regarding rebuilding a RAID.  This was discussed on an Episode 241 with Weldon Dodd.

-Jerry has some rave reviews about a podcast app for Apple Watch called Outcast
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outcast-for-apple-watch/

Some more of Jerry's reviews:
PopClip Extensions
pilotmoon.com/popclip/

Card Hop
https://flexibits.com/cardhop

-Joe's pop quiz: how is a shut down and cold boot different from a restart?

-Another new segment from Joe!  How to think like a client?
This week: Backups.  A client wouldn't realize that the key to laptops backing up reliably is to plug them into power while they are open and awake, unless they support Power Nap (Dark Wake). The default setting is not to back up while on battery power.

-One of Jerry's clients has an issue where she thought all of her documents appearing as My Documents.zip.  The explanation is something we have all encountered before.

-How much time have you spent assisting clients with downloading and running TeamViewer?

THANK YOU TO OUR PATREON SPONSORS!

246: Let Go Of My Echo or Echo Location

Topics:

Will you be at ACEs 2018? Join us there & catch a live show!
Register Here:
https://acesconf.com/ccp

-Joe has some follow up on the Gmail Bcc mystery

-A talk about the latest ACN announcements, including the ACN Roadshow.  Joe will be attending in NYC on March 13th and Sam will be in Santa Monica on February 21st.

-Jerry has a very odd story about ordering an Echo for a customer via his Amazon account

-A macOS Server PSA from Joe - Apple Support article about changes coming in macOS Server

-Sam hasn't had a lot of affection for Airport Extremes but this latest issue with firewall settings and port forwarding not working doesn't give him the warm & fuzzies

-Jerry has an issue with a possibly bad Samsung Evo 850 and ends up replacing it within another with success
Etrecheck.com is a handy tool he has used to detect software & hardware problems on Macs

-Have you heard Jerry mention Occam's Razor on show's past.  Curious as to what the reference is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

-220/221 Volts Whatever it takes? - YouTube (Mr. Mom reference!)

-Joe attempts a pop quiz about Photos and the All Photos vs Photos view

-Sam has to secretly Google "how to pair Air Pods" while at a client

-While Jerry is on-site to work on a Synology, he is asked to assist with a problem iMac.  As it turned out, he was sending them Watchman alerts all along about a drive failure.

-Joe has some follow up on MacBook Pro uptime; MacBook Pro with slow wake from sleep after closing lid? Try restarting! Slow changing network interfaces? Try restarting!

-Encryption a Fusion drive with FileVault was proving to be a long and arduous process for Jerry.  Only periodically moving the mouse would force it to progress again.  Jerry found a free app called "Jiggler" to keep the mouse active periodically. 
http://www.sticksoftware.com/software/Jiggler.html
To see the status of the encryption process, he used this command:
diskutil cs list | grep “Conversion Progress” 

241: "Not Dead Yet" With Weldon Dodd of Rewind Tech - Denver, CO

Topics:

-To start the new year, we are very pleased to be joined on our first live show of 2018 by Weldon Dodd of Rewind Technology in Denver, CO.  Weldon hangs with the crew as another host in case Sam goes missing again.
https://rewindtech.com

-Some things never change, the old HCS land grab jokes are in full swing

-Joe discusses the first zero day exploit of 2018, actually launched via tweet on New Year's Eve. Check out the IOHIDeous narrative on GitHub, kind of interesting! The vulnerability exists in a process called IOHIDUserClient which the macOS limits to having only a single instance at any given time, which happens to be spawned by WindowServer. So in order to exploit the vulnerability, we need to kill the WindowServer process. But terminating it requires admin privileges and essentially reboots the GUI, so this is not a viable mode of exploitation. But it turns out that by logging out the user, WindowServer releases its IOHIDUserClient temporarily, giving the exploit enough time to spawn its own instance of IOHIDUserClient and leverage it to compromise the system. The exploit can use "launchctl reboot logout" which does not display a warning dialog. The exploit can also use an AppleScript command to send loginwindow an event called "AppleEventReallyLogOut" (osascript -e 'tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrlgo»'), and loginwindow apparently doesn't care who sent the event, but it does display a dialog box as if the user selected "Log Out" from the Apple menu.

-Jerry wonders if this will be on the CCP test

-Sam recalls a story working after hours at a client when the alarm goes off

-Weldon shares his story of a Promise RAID gone wrong. Friends don't let clients pull drives out of RAID drive bays.  It also leads to a further discussion about how to handle RAID solutions and future expansion.

-A handy virtualization app for Synology, which Sam has used in conjunction with CrashPlan, is Docker: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/docker

-Jerry is busy building Minecraft worlds on Synology. He ends up needing a volume formatted as Btrfs.  Read more here: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/Btrfs

-Time Machine and Synology has had a spotty past

-Sam discusses a Wi-Fi upgrade in NYC and replaced aging equipment with Ubiquiti Unifi. He also has some advice on utilizing a Cloud Key.

-He also mentions a handy workaround to test network settings remotely while still needing to reconnect to the remote computer.  Joe recalls a similar solution for another problem.

-Jerry talks about the Unifi In Wall units that he has set up recently: https://inwall.ubnt.com

Thanks as always to our Patreon sponsors!

Listen to the outtakes and learn the origin of this picture!

238: Interview With Pepijn Bruienne Of DUO Security & The Mac Admins Podcast

Pepijn Bruienne is a Research and Development Engineer at Duo Security in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He breaks Macs to help his employer's customers be more secure. With more than a decade and a half of experience in a variety of Mac Admins areas, his skills include Systems Administration, Operations Management, Mac/Linux/Windows Server and Desktop integration, software deployment, configuration management and process automation.

Pepijn is also co-host of the popular Mac Admins Podcast and friend to our show.  Subscribe today and listen to Pepijn and the crew discuss all things in the Apple IT world.  Listen to the first Command Control Power/Mac Admins crossover show here:
https://podcast.macadmins.org/2017/10/01/episode-53-cultural-exchange-with-sam-valencia/

237: Beeping not Clicking

- Justin Esgar of the ACEs Conference and Will O'Neal, President of Mid-Atlantic Computer Solutions, join us to discuss ACEs 2018 in Baltimore, MD

- listeners get a 10% discount on ACEs Conference: https://acesconf.com/go/ccp

- Sam helped his Mom with iOS 11 update

- Jerry has MacBook Pro followup: he upgraded to a two year old machine

- buying on eBay

- selling used Macs on eBay or Mac Of All Trades

- Johnny Ive responds to criticism of MacBook Pro

- iPhone X impressions

- Sam fixed a failing drive that was beeping, not clicking: Opened up 2.5” hard drive to repair (moved the heads into park position while turning platter counterclockwise (it was beeping, NOT clicking)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNJqTPutrJ4

- The Piezoelectric Effect

- Text Expander Snippet For Email Advice

- High Sierra PSA courtesy of Jason Campbell, ZMS Consulting:

“Scenerio: A Mac workstation running High Sierra is working off a Mac server. The Mac server is running macOS Server.app 5. 

Issue: The lock files generated when opening files that live on the Mac server aren’t deleting when the file is closed. This causes ‘file in use’ messages when trying to open the file again. It times out in about 10 minutes but still another reason to hold off on upgrading businesses to High Sierra. Apple engineers are aware of this and are working to resolve.”

Credit to Jeff Satterwhite for finding the issue. He’s the owner of Post Mod Tech out of Austin, TX. He’s a longstanding ACN member and FileMaker developer. 

Thanks to our Patrons for sponsoring Command Control Power!