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058: Talking Shop part 10

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Recorded live July 8, 2014

- Jerry's main 13-inch MacBook Air gets depot'd; what to do when your primary machine goes in for repair?

- OWC offers upgrades for flash storage modules in MacBook Air 2010-2011 and 2012 models

- how to restore client data when a machine comes back from Apple with a wiped drive? clone? update & migrate?

- This is the sapphire crystal display from the iPhone 6?

- black screen at startup after migrating data to new MacBook Air; solution: delete loginwindow.plist

- Jerry's black screen Mac mini: reinstalling Mavericks fixed it

- processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #1: fallout from prior liquid damage, covered under 1-year warranty by MicroReplay

- processor throttling due to thermal protection on MacBook Pro #2 after machine froze during sleep: fixed with SMC reset

- Apple's Refurbished Outlet eBay Store

- using SSD Fan Control to work around lack of temperature data on third party hard drives replaced in some iMac models

057: Kobayashi Maru

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- Microsoft's takedown of 23 of No-IP's most common domains to stop malware, claiming their intention to keep "valid" subdomains resolving, but apparently they have been unable to handle the number of requests; Microsoft's statement

- when it rains, it pours: how to cope

- redundancy, fault tolerance, risk tolerance

- Mac mini colocation via Macminicolo.net or Mac Mini Vault

- running a mail server for clients: backup MX via Dyn.com or McAfee SaaS, or using a cheap mail server to forward messages to personal email accounts

- clients sending banking info or passwords by email, forming bad habits

056: A Bitcoin mine hiding in your server rack?

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Recorded live on June 24, 2014

Sponsored by Smile, makers of PDFpen for iPad – a great way to grab a client's signature and finish a meeting with a signed contract, right on your iPad. Plus, it now has Transporter integration (along with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and Box), so you can pick up the signed contract on your cloud of choice when you get back to your office. Listen to the show for a special offer for ACN members!

Show Notes

Thadd Weil, Public Relations Manager for Synology joins us for a live interview to discuss vulnerabilities in older versions of Synology's DiskStation Manager software, which were patched last year by Synology but made the news recently

Check out the ACN Alumni list at Google Groups, for current and former members of the Apple Consultants Network

Sam and Joe made a guest appearance on Thank You For Calling along with Peter Cohen and Stephen Hackett, hosted by Moisés Chiullan

Followup

Joe posted his Automator workflow to Export VPN Configurations

055: First Macs

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Recorded live June 17, 2014

This week's show is sponsored by Drobo. The Drobo Gen 3 (4-bay) is now shipping! Use coupon code CCP50 for $50 off at DroboStore.com and support the show!

Topics

- Jerry describes an issue where an admin user shows up as being Managed with Parental Controls after an upgrade to Mavericks, despite still appearing as an admin; also a keychain issue with the Local Items keychain

- Joe rambles through trying to remember the details of an issue with iCloud Keychain and SoftwareUpdateLauncher hanging; see this Apple Discussions post

- Sam leverages VoiceOver to navigate a blank screen which turned out to the be login window; we narrowly avoid another server discussion

- WWDC 2014 videos are available online without a developer account; Jerry recommends #702, Managing Apple Devices

- Joe's Export VPN Configurations Automator workflow to help migrate VPN configurations to a new Mac

- Sam, Jerry, and Joe discuss their first Macs which prompts some lively war stories from the chatroom

- Jerry recommends NetNewsWire for RSS feeds and TweetBot for keeping up with Twitter; Sam uses NewsBar; Joe reloads tabs for some reason

Export VPN Configurations when migrating to a new Mac

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VPN Configurations are among the few things not automatically migrated by Migration Assistant when switching to a new Mac. As Apple Consultants, we often have dozens of VPN connections to client networks conveniently listed in the VPN menu. With one-click access to client networks, we're ready to connect and provide remote support at a moment's notice.

After successfully migrating to a new Mac, there's a certain kind of "cobbler's kids" dread the first time you instinctively reach for the VPN menu and find none of your familiar connections listed.

Here's a quick-and-dirty Automator workflow I put together to help migrate VPN configurations when switching to my new MacBook Air a couple of years ago.

Preparation

  1. Open System Preferences > Network, and click the lock to authenticate if necessary.
  2. Select the first VPN connection in the service list.
  3. Click the gear below service list, and choose Export Configurations.
  4. Select the "Export the default configuration" and "Include items from the system keychain" checkboxes.
  5. Navigate to a folder of your choosing, or create one – this folder will be used by the Automator workflow to save each of the exported VPN configurations. Click Save.

Export VPN Configurations

  1. Download the Export VPN Configurations Automator workflow and put the application in your Dock (temporarily) to make it easier to access.
  2. Open the Export VPN Configurations app in your Dock. The first time you open it, you will get an error that the action Watch Me Do encountered an error. Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy, and check the box on the Privacy tab to allow Export VPN Configurations to control your computer.
  3. Make sure the second VPN connection is selected in System Preferences > Network (you've already exported the first one in the preparation steps above).
  4. Click the Export VPN Configurations app in your Dock to run it.
  5. After the workflow runs, the next VPN connection will be selected automatically. Run the workflow again to export the next VPN connection, and repeat until you've exported all of your VPN connections.

Import VPN Configurations

Perhaps this could benefit from some automation, but I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

  1. Copy the folder where you saved your VPN configurations to your new Mac.
  2. Open System Preferences > Network, and click lock to authenticate if necessary.
  3. For each VPN configuration: Click the plus (+) below the service list on the left, and add a new VPN interface with the correct type (L2TP over IPSec, PPTP, or Cisco IPSec) and name it accordingly, e.g. "Client A VPN (L2TP)."
  4. Open each VPN configuration file you copied to your new Mac, and choose the corresponding interface you created in step 3.