Virtualization session at Penn State MacAdmins 2015

I’ll be speaking about OS X and virtualization at the Penn State MacAdmins Conference 2015, which is being held from July 7th – 10th 2015 in State College. For those interested, my talk will be on Thursday, July 9th.

For a description of what I’ll be talking about, please see the Virtualization and OS X Testing – building your test environment using virtual Macs session description. You can see the whole list of speakers here on the Speakers page.

Installing Joyent’s pkgsrc package manager on OS X

As part of working with open source software on OS X, it’s often convenient to use a package manager to install open source packages. Good package managers are useful because they handle downloading the open source software you want, make sure that any related software dependencies get handled, and make it easy to keep the software you installed up to date.

The ones that I’ve worked with in the past have been the following:

• Fink
• MacPorts
• Homebrew

All have their good points and bad points, but my colleague Tom Bridge pointed me in the direction of Joyent’s pkgsrc and this one may be my go-to going forward.

pkgsrc has the following strengths:

1. Easy to install
2. Works on multiple Unix-based platforms
3. Installs its software all within one dedicated location (/opt/pkg)
4. Does not require the creation of dedicated local user accounts
5. Installs software with root privileges

That last point was important to me because Homebrew doesn’t do that. Instead, Homebrew installs software with the ownership set to be the user who ran the installation command.

That characteristic of Homebrew has always made me crazy, but I freely admit that’s my own personal peeve. As with many things, I’m not going to tell folks what package manager to use if their choice is working well for them.

To aid with the installation of pkgsrc on OS X, I’ve written a script. For more details, see below the jump.

USB-A to USB-C connections via USB Target Mode not usable by Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant

Apple has updated its Using the USB-C port and adapters on your MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015) KBase article to provide more detail about USB Target Mode. One piece of information that jumped out at me was this section:

For reference, a USB-A connector looks like this.

Based on my reading of the KBase article, you will not be able to connect a 2015 MacBook in USB Target Disk Mode to a Mac with USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports and expect to be able to transfer data via Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to the USB 2.0/3.0-equipped Mac. 

There are a couple of workarounds for this limitation:

1. Cloning the MacBook’s drive to an external drive and plugging that external drive into the USB 2.0/3.0-equipped Mac.
2. Creating a Time Machine backup of the MacBook’s drive and accessing the Time Machine backup on the USB 2.0/3.0-equipped Mac.

Both of these workarounds should allow the MacBook’s data to be accessible by Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant.

Upgrading from ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.x via SSH and esxcli

In the wake of VMware’s release of ESXi 6.0, I upgraded my ESXi 5.5 server to ESXi 6 using the install ISO file. However, it is also possible to perform the upgrade from 5.5 to 6.0 via SSH and esxcli. For more details, see below the jump.

Using VMware’s Standalone Remote Console for OS X with free ESXi

VMware recently released a Virtual Machine Remote Console (VMRC) application for OS X users. This application is designed to complement the browser-based console for vSphere users by providing a native application for launching a remote console session with a vSphere-hosted virtual machine.

A nice bonus is that the VMRC application can also connect to an ESXi server which is using VMware’s free license for ESXi. This provides a way for users of free ESXi to access ESXi-hosted VMs via a remote console session without needing to run either the Windows vSphere client or VMware Fusion Professional. For more details, see below the jump.

Virtualization session at MacIT 2015

I’ll be speaking about OS X and virtualization at MacIT 2015, which is being held from July 14th -16th, 2015 in Santa Clara, California. For those interested, my talk will be on Wednesday, July 15th.

For a description of what I’ll be talking about, please see the Virtualization and OS X Testing – Building Your Test Environment Using Virtual Macs session page, which is linked on the MacIT Wednesday Full Agenda page.

Creating mobile accounts using createmobileaccount is not working on OS X 10.10.3

Following the release of OS X 10.10.3, I noticed in my testing that I was no longer able to create Active Directory mobile user accounts using the /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount tool.

The process of using the createmobileaccount tool usually works like this:

1. Open Terminal or run a script
2. Run the following command with root privileges:

/System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount -n network_account_username_goes_here

What normally happens is a new mobile account and home folder are then set up on the Mac for the network_account_username_goes_here account. On 10.10.3, I’m receiving an error indicating that the mobile account could not be created.

To try to narrow down if it was an issue specific to Active Directory account, I tested against both my shop’s Active Directory domain and OpenLDAP domain. In both cases, I received similar errors.

Active Directory on OS X 10.10.3

	computername:~ username$ sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount -n username_goes_here
	createmobileaccount built Mar 4 2015 21:45:09
	2015-04-09 09:22:13.922 createmobileaccount[69912:277627] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7f89a9c162b0 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 09:22:13.982 createmobileaccount[69912:277616] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_SUSPEND, &(uid=699453718), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.433 createmobileaccount[69912:277616] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_RESUME, &(uid=699453718), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.542 createmobileaccount[69912:277643] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7f89a9d0e980 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.542 createmobileaccount[69912:277616] MCXCCreateMobileAccount(): Failed to create account. Error = -6304 (mobile account file path is either not a directory or could not be properly created). Cleaning up mobile account record.
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.546 createmobileaccount[69912:277643] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7f89a9d5a840 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.549 createmobileaccount[69912:277616] MCXCDeleteAccount(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_SUSPEND, &(uid=699453718), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.550 createmobileaccount[69912:277620] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7f89a9c392c0 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.578 createmobileaccount[69912:277643] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7f89ac101990 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 09:22:14.578 createmobileaccount[69912:277616] MCXCDeleteAccount(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_RESUME, &(uid=699453718), NULL)failed
	*** mobile account could not be created: -6304 (MCXCCreateMobileAccount(): [newUser createHomeDirectory] failed)
	computername:~ username$

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OpenLDAP on OS X 10.10.3

	computername:~ username$ sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount -n username_goes_here
	createmobileaccount built Mar 4 2015 21:45:09
	2015-04-09 11:34:12.184 createmobileaccount[388:3436] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7fea4b5105b0 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 11:34:12.356 createmobileaccount[388:3432] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_SUSPEND, &(uid=990371), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 11:34:12.786 createmobileaccount[388:3432] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_RESUME, &(uid=990371), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.316 createmobileaccount[388:3436] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7fea4b458d50 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.317 createmobileaccount[388:3432] MCXCCreateMobileAccount(): Failed to create account. Error = -6304 (mobile account file path is either not a directory or could not be properly created). Cleaning up mobile account record.
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.322 createmobileaccount[388:3435] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7fea4b458d10 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.329 createmobileaccount[388:3432] MCXCDeleteAccount(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_SUSPEND, &(uid=990371), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.330 createmobileaccount[388:3433] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7fea4b45a5d0 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.377 createmobileaccount[388:3435] ### syncProxyWithSemaphore error:Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application." (connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig) UserInfo=0x7fea4b463590 {NSDebugDescription=connection to service named com.apple.systemadministration.writeconfig}
	2015-04-09 11:34:13.378 createmobileaccount[388:3432] MCXCDeleteAccount(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_RESUME, &(uid=990371), NULL)failed
	*** mobile account could not be created: -6304 (MCXCCreateMobileAccount(): [newUser createHomeDirectory] failed)
	computername:~ username$

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To verify that this was a 10.10.3-specific issue, I re-ran my tests in a 10.10.2 VM. On 10.10.2, my results were what I expected: A new mobile account and home folder were created on the VM.

Mobile account creation on OS X 10.10.2

	computername:~ username$ sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount -n username_goes_here
	createmobileaccount built Nov 16 2014 15:10:36
	2015-04-09 10:28:29.316 createmobileaccount[968:5545] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_SUSPEND, &(uid=699453718), NULL) failed
	2015-04-09 10:28:29.809 createmobileaccount[968:5545] MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): vproc_swap_integer(NULL, VPROC_GSK_PERUSER_RESUME, &(uid=699453718), NULL) failed
	computername:~ username$

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Mobile account creation via the OS loginwindow

One piece of good news is that this does not appear to affect the creation of mobile accounts via the loginwindow. In my testing against my Active Directory domain, automatic mobile account creation via the loginwindow appears to work fine.

The process I used in my testing looked like this:

1. Bind test Mac running OS X 10.10.3 to my shop’s Active Directory domain, with mobile account creation enabled in the Apple Active Directory plug-in’s settings.
2. Verify that the test account was not present as a mobile account on the Mac
3. Log in with the test account’s credentials at the loginwindow

The results were what I expected: A new mobile account and home folder were created on the test Mac.

To help get this issue fixed, I’ve filed a bug report. For those interested in duping it, it’s bug ID 20482382.

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Update 4-10-2015: My bug report has been closed as a duplicate of bug ID 20295898. If you want to file a bug report that dupes mine, please use the following bug ID to do so:

Bug ID 20295898

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For those interested in the details, I’ve also posted the bug report to Open Radar:

http://www.openradar.me/20482382

Accessing and unhiding the hidden ~/Library folder

Starting in Mac OS X 10.7.x, Apple started hiding the Library directory stored inside an account’s home folder. I’ve written a script to un-hide it on my own Macs, but I recently came across a couple of Apple-supported ways to access and unhide the ~/Library directory. For more details, see below the jump.