Using installinstallmacos.py to download macOS High Sierra installers

Starting with macOS Sierra, Apple moved the macOS Installer applications from being exclusively an App Store download to now being included in the regular Software Update catalogs. This means that it’s possible to download macOS installers, including those for macOS betas or hardware-specific macOS builds, using the command-line softwareupdate tool.

To assist with this task, Greg Neagle has written a Python script named installinstallmacos.py. installinstallmacos.py is designed to do the following:

1. Parse a specified Software Update feed.
2. Identify the listed products which appear to be macOS installers.
3. Display a menu of the available choices.

Once you’ve selected from the available options, the script does the following:

4. Creates a disk image and names it with the appropriate information for the specified macOS installer.
5. Mounts the disk image.
6. Downloads all the relevant packages from the Software Update feed for the specified macOS installer.
7. Installs the packages onto the disk image.
8. Unmounts the disk image.
9. Stores the disk image in the current working directory (this is likely going to be the logged-in user’s home folder.)

For more details, please see below the jump.

Slides from the “Managing FileVault 2 on macOS High Sierra” Session at MacAD UK 2018 Conference

For those who wanted a copy of my FileVault 2 management talk at MacAD UK 2018, here are links to the slides in PDF and Keynote format.

PDF – http://tinyurl.com/MacADUK2018pdf

Keynote – http://tinyurl.com/MacADUK2018key

Hat tip to the attendee who brought to my attention that fdesetup sync is not supported on encrypted APFS boot drives. I’ve now updated the slides to reflect that it works on macOS High Sierra for HFS+ drives only.

HFS+

APFS

Backing up the contents of an AWS-hosted Jamf Pro cloud distribution point to a local directory

As part of removing unused packages from a Jamf Pro cloud distribution point using @shea_craig‘s Spruce tool, I needed to first make a backup of the contents of the cloud distribution point to a local directory on my Mac. That way, in case I had made an error and deleted the wrong installer package, I had a copy of the package readily available and could re-add the package back to my Jamf Pro server.

The cloud distribution point in question is hosted out in Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) S3 service, so I decided to use AWS’s awscli command line tool‘s S3 functions to run a one-way synchronization process between the cloud distribution point in S3 and my local directory. For more details, please see below the jump.

FileVault management on macOS High Sierra session at Mac Admin & Developer Conference UK 2018

I’ll be speaking at Mac Admin & Developer Conference UK 2018, which is taking place in London from February 20th – 21st, 2018. My session will be on Wednesday, February 21st and is covering FileVault management on macOS High Sierra, with discussion of how to manage encryption on both APFS and HFS Plus drives..

The full conference schedule is available from https://www.macad.uk/2018speakers/schedule/ and you can see the entire list of speakers at http://www.macad.uk/2018speakers/