Need backup solution with zero user interaction

Good Day.
I'm putting together a external/offsite backup solution for a client that runs OSX10 Server on a Mac Mini.
Their data is on a Promise SAN, and they currently back up via software daily to an externally attached 4TB Drive.
The big problem is that each day, a user comes in and removes "yesterday's" external drive to give it to the courier who stored it offsite, then they plug in the drive for "today's" backup. Neither the user nor the courier has access to log in to the server to unmount the external drive. Many times, this leaves the external drive in a corrupted state and unusable.
I'm not allowed to give the user of the courier access to the server, and attempts to schedule or script the unmounting of the drives have been troublesome.
I'd like to know if there's a solution out there, possibly an external chassis with removable drives or something similar that can be used to allow for easy removal of the drives to offsite storage that would not require an actual unmounting of the drive.
All advice is appreciated.

What software are you currently using to do backups?
Not that it will help, but if you were backing up to an external optical drive e.g. DVD or Blu-Ray then they have a physical eject button which would tidily eject the media, unfortunately hard disks and even hard disk docks do not work the same way.
Something that might help would be if whatever backup solution you used was able to work on a Mac that did not need to be logged in as a user, in other words that ran as a Unix style background process. This would mean that as no user is logged in the Finder would not be active and this would reduce but not eliminate the avenues for corruption.
Again it will probably not help you but a different approach used by many is to backup over a WAN or Internet link to another site, with this approach your backup media is already offsite and you don't need to eject it to transport it. This does of course rely on a decent speed link in both directions so as to both allow backups and restores.
Something else to consider, if you used a separate dedicated Mac for doing the backups rather than a server then you could consider giving the courier access to the backup machine without having to give access to a server. If you use encrypted disk images on the backup drive then even with access to the backup machine it maybe possible to still prevent their access to data on it.

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Deployment with minimal user interaction

We are interested in deploying iPads to users in our company, but we want to do so with minimal user interaction. From what I can tell the best way to do this would be to sync our iPads with one computer and have that computer's iTunes manage the applications that can be installed on all device.
What features would our users not have access to without having direct access to iTunes on their own computer (e.g., data backup)?
Why would doing this not be a good idea?
If after the initial setup we would like to install another application, must we physically obtain the device(s) again to install the application?

halabaluba wrote:
We are interested in deploying iPads to users in our company, but we want to do so with minimal user interaction. From what I can tell the best way to do this would be to sync our iPads with one computer and have that computer's iTunes manage the applications that can be installed on all device.
What features would our users not have access to without having direct access to iTunes on their own computer (e.g., data backup)?
Why would doing this not be a good idea?
If after the initial setup we would like to install another application, must we physically obtain the device(s) again to install the application?
Who will own the iPads?
Will you allow them to take the iPads home?
If they take the iPads home and sync them at home (they will) then anything you installed from your central computer is GONE. The only thing that will stick is the setting you deployed using the “configuration utility”.

Re-image computer with no user interaction at all - SCCM 2012

I have searched many posts and havent found a clear solution for my question.
Basically, I have OSD task sequence ready to go on my SCCM 2012 R2. It is fine to run it as "Available".
If I deploy the OSD through Software Center as "Required" and "ASAP", then I login the client, the client will run OSD task sequence sometime after about 30Min-1 hour later, not sure. And there will be no user interaction needed. However
this means I need remotely log into each computer to let OSD happen.
If I deploy the same TASK Sequence as "Required" and "ASAP" through "PXE", it will first ask PXE Password(Which I set in DP->PXE Panel), then I need hit "Next" again to start the assigned OSD, which means I need
physically go to each computer to do this. (EDIT: If needed, I can remove PXE password and add VB scripts in other Task Sequence, however I want to know if I still need press NEXT to start the OSD).
The clients are not AMT enabled but Lan Wake up enabled and also can be set to LAN WAKE UP Enabled with boot from LAN. I can wake up/shutdown the whole collection with command if needed.
Is there a way that I can Re-image one collection of Computers without any interaction on client side?
The other question is how long to wait for OSD when it is set to "ASAP"?
RockyOZ

Guess I just answered question myself. With PXE Password removed, the OSD runs without user interaction. Thanks. I will add the password in task sequences instead.
RockyOZ

Auto-install updates, with no user interaction?

Due to problems with malware, we can't really trust everyone to be logged on with administrator privileges all the time as it used to be with Windows 2000 and XP. Consequently the installed software can not be modified by staff anymore.
This doesn't affect Windows Updates since those can be configured to install automatically on a schedule without any user interaction or privilege elevation.
Java for Windows however does not detect when a logged in user does not have administrative rights, so it offers updates to everyone who logs on, including people who can not and will not ever be able to install the updates.
One "solution" is to turn off the update checking so that people aren't hassled by useless update notifications, but then this means Windows desktops will gradually fall further and further out of date, opening them up to attack by malware that exploits unpatched bugs in older Java versions.
The proper solution that I really want, is for Java to be capable of auto-update and self-install without any user interaction or privilege elevation at all. However so far I have not found a solution for this.
A hack may be possible using Windows group policy, the Windows Server task scheduler, and a java website screenscraper.
Nightly:
* Screenscrape Java.com for a newer client version
* If new one is found, download, put in global read-access share
* Using a database of machines known to be running Java, flag each candidate that's using an older version
* Wake-on-LAN the machines needing the update
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* shut down again for the night.
OR
Java programmers could implement an auto-install mechanism of their own, that can run by itself without user interaction at system startup, shutdown, or on a timed schedule set by the administrator through registry entries (and therefore configurable via group policy applied to desktops).
==========
How are other network administrators handling managed business desktops that need periodic, automatic, and non-interactive Java updates?

We use Altiris Software Delivery solution to deploy our Java updates but you could also use similar solutions such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.
The problem is that these are both options that cost money and require investment and training.
Altiris allows you to create a collection based on the text string held in the Add/Remove Programs list (as well as other fields) - so you can easily create a collection of computers that do not have the required version of Java.
You can then create a software delivery task to silently install Java with admin rights and target it towards the collection that needs updating.
The collection updates dynamically. As the computers get Java they drop out of the collection and are no longer targetted for upgrade. This used to work well for me - as I could update about 500 machines in about 2-3 days.
The problem is that the Java installer doesn't work consistently as you mentioned since JRE 6u25 - the installer doesn't always behave as expected and the switches to do silent installs keep changing. You also have a problem if you try to update Java and the person has their web browser open... Yes, I do my updates during working hours as well.
In a constantly changing environment in terms of security - you'd think Oracle would have sorted the deployment options out by now?

Dialog with no user interaction

Hi all,
I would like to use the one button dialog that would just showing a message without requiring any user interaction. With the dialog, I only want to display a message for the user. I want the program to continue running without needing user interaction. I just want to let the user know that something happened. I don't need to user to do anything. How do I do that?
Yik
Kudos and Accepted as Solution are welcome!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

A more common approach is to use a "Status log" (just a string on the UI that gives the user some idea what is going on.)
Here is a construct I often use (place the control "Status" on the UI, Add a control to the referance to "Status" wire the Connector pane.) This type of action engine (see Ben's excellant nugget) lets you send update messages to the user from anywhere in the application instance space without leaving pop-ups all over the screen.
And should you wish, you can add cases to Show, blink, unblink, highlight, move or Hide the indicator so it peeks out and dances
Jeff

Unable to boot normally - Always need to boot with Single User Mode

Hi Community,
Since last few days, I am unable to boot my Macbook Pro normally, running latest version of OS X Yosemite. When I boot, it goes to grey screen with Apple logo and progress bar, once the progress completes to 100% (after 5-10 minutes which is very longer than usual), it asks me to 'Select language' which seems like fresh installation of OS X. In that case, when I click next and it doesn't detect my SSD (blank list of select installation disk/drive).
After reading some threads, I found work-around and always need to boot into Single user mode (by pressing Command+S during power on) and then need to run following commands...
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/sbin/mount -uw /
"device is write protected" numerous times
reboot
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How can I fix this?

Please help me out here. I tried booting it off a USB flash drive with ATV flash but that gave me some errors and prompted me to login with username [email protected] with password frontrow
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Thanks
Sinu

Easy Server 2012 backup solutions with tape support?

We have several smaller to midsized customers that have invested money in tape drives and tapes. They are using Symantec BackupExec on Server 2003 / 2008 and 2008 R2. Unfortunately, Symantec postponed Server 2012 support in their products many times
already. This fact costs us many business opportunities to upgrade infrastructures to Server 2012.
DPM 2012 is good for larger customers, but less suited for smaller companies (and the DPM "philosophy change" of the backup procedures, compared to older tape based backup solutions is an obstacle as well.)
So we are looking for EASY backup solutions that support tape drives and server 2012. The "perfect" product for us would be just a tape driver and an extension to the integrated Windows Server Backup that would allow to store backups on tapes,
the same way that Windows Backup allows backups to network shared folders.
Does anyone knows EASY backup software that provides this functionality? I'm also very interested in feedback from peoples that have successfully used such products on Server 2012 and are satisfied with them.
Thank you all in advance for any help.
Franz

Looks like we are in the same boat here with 2012.
For all its trouble, BackupExec has been instrumental for us in providing our customers with a backup application that no other software vendor has been able to match. This includes:
1) Granular backup and restore of Exchange allowing the restore of individual mailboxes and single mail items
2) The same Granular backup and restore of Hyper-V's VMs
3) The ability to backup to Tape, Removable USB HDD and NAS and Network shares
Not even Shadow Protect cuts the mustard anymore – it’s become simply “stupid”.
Although we love the simplicity and robustness of Windows Backup, there are some very serious deficiencies including;
1) The extreme difficulty of adding additional USB HDD after the backup schedule has been created. I believe that this has partially been resolved in R2 but in 2012 it was a utter mess-up. We
resorted to hooking up two 5-port USB Powered Hubs so we could make sure that all USB HDDs could be included in the schedule - what a mission! One blown hub after the other - couldn't find one that could handle the electrical current load of 5x USB HDDs!
2) No Granular restore ability of nothing... had to resort back to the "old school" ESEUTIL "after" restoring the entire Exchange database to alternate location.
3) Backup to a Network Share is pathetic - can't store more than the current backup. What use is that? Had to resort to backing up to Network Share then including that backup in another Windows backup - go figure!
Like Franz, our customers have invested HEAVILY in Tape Drive hardware (some of which cost the customer in excess of $8000) and that excludes the cost of Symantec BackupExec.
Although BackupExec 2012 now supports Server 2012, the re-purchase of the software is not a consideration to most of our customers.
Sorry Franz, I don’t have a solution for Tape Drives yet. This is one reason why we have stayed away from deploying 2012 that already have a recent investment in Tape Drive technology.
However, because there is NO other backup solution that compares to Symantec BackupExec (version <2010), we have been successfully implementing a hybrid solution (which, unfortunately, still does not include Tape Drives) including our own business.
As BackupExec 2010 does not support Windows 2012 as a “Media Server” there IS a workaround in a “virtual environment”.
We have successfully installed BackupExec 2010 on a Hyper-V Virtual Server as the “media server” and targeted the backups to shared folders on both NAS and removable USB HDD shares (off the Host Server).
Although it works GREAT, there is still the serious deficiency of not been able to use Tape Drives (unless some really bright spark out there has an idea on how to make a Tape Drive accessible to a VM).
Another REALLY good solution in which we deployed just last week was to supply the customer with a dirt-cheap PC, install it with Windows 2008 and the Tape Drive and schedule all the normal (and yummy) BackupExec 2010 granular backups to. Remember, the BackupExec
agent WILL install and run just fine on Server 2012 - no problems there.
This has become an INSTANT hit and this is OUR solution – a very small price to pay for “real granular” backups to Tape Drive.
I hope that you find that the mentioned "good solution" a viable and cost-effective workaround.
Backup Exec DOES NOT support Windows 2012. I just got of the phone with them today April 24, 2014. I have been using BE since Seagate made version 7. Every product Symantec buys eventually turns to crap! I just left Symantec Endpoint
Protection after 13 years because it is unreliable and has very poor detection compared to other products. In fact, it is so bad, that Symantec won't participate in any third-party evaluations that they don't pay for such as AV-Comparatives.org.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Symantec!

Network backup server with network users

I have a few problems with my backup server:
I was waiting for years to be able to backup easily all the computers of my research lab. This is what I have done after having installed Leopard on all the machines.
Disks: I have setup a RAID 1 array with two 1TB firewire 800 hard drives. The drives have been formated as GUID. Next, I have created one folder for each computer to backup.
Users: I didn't want to create users on my backup server, so I have added our department server (XServe G4/10.4 server) as an open directory server for ma backup server. In system preferences>sharing>AFP, i have added the folders as shares, and given read/write permissions to my network users (1 user/1 share).
Clients: on each client, the share has been mounted and declared as 'time machine'.
The problems: Everything worked flawlessly for a couple of weeks… but now
Shares are disappearing in my system pref>sharing panel. Some of them can be re-shared, but a few simply don't want to. Users permissions sometime change to unknown user.
Can anyone help?
Configuration: Backup server = core 2 duo white iMac 24" with leopard client.
Clients: G4 & G5 towers, G5 and Intel iMacs

It appears that AFP suffers from bugs in Leopard, i.e. sharepoints are badly handled.
The solution is described here:
http://www.installationexperiences.com/?p=81
This is a copy of the page:
Use the dscl command in the terminal application to delete duplicate SharePoint names if your Apple Mac OS X Leopard system is advertising multiple or suffixed shares (-1, -2, etc). Execute sudo dscl, then cd /Local/Default/SharePoints. With an ls, you can see the share names. Stop file sharing from the Sharing Preferences pane, remove the share from the Shared Folders window and uncheck Shared Folder from Get Info on the folder or volume being shared. Next ls in dscl again and if there are still duplicates, delete them all with delete yoursharename in dscl. Next restart File Sharing in Preferences and add shares with the Shared Folders checkbox in the Get Info window. Do not add shares with Shared Folders in the File Sharing Preferences. Leopard has a problem that somehow causes APF and SAMBA SMB shares to be duplicated with a suffix of -1, -2, -3, etc. Mac OS X shows the share with the highest suffix, SMB browsers show all the share names. The above instructions will fix AFP problems. To fix SMB problems, it might be necessary to use the Finder or Terminal to delete all the share name files in /var/samba/shares while File Sharing is turned off. Leopard will re-create all the samba files based on the SharePoints viewable with dscl.
Apple doesn’t seem to be aware of this issue. At least one other person is having this problem as discussed in the Apple Forums Thread 1316884. First level and “product specialist” at Apple Support did not know how to fix this issue. The “product specialist” stated that it was caused by an “echo” due to “redundant” use of Screen Sharing, File Sharing, Web Sharing and Remote Login. According to the Specialist, “that many services are not to be used simultaneously”. Of course, we know that Specialist was wrong.
It appears the problem is inconsistent information between the Shared Folders list in the File Sharing Preferences pane and the check box in the Get Info window. It has also been noticed that shares disappear from the Shared Folders File Sharing Preferences when they are still advertised on the network. By using the share folder check box in Get Info, the problems in the Shared Folders pane may be avoided. In other words, don’t pay any attention to the Shared Folders list. Do all sharing and permissions from the Get Info window.
This problem was experienced trying to establish a file server system in the home. The need is for file and print services available to Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X systems. An iMac and a MacBook Pro were used to set up the system and it has not been easy. SMB sharing was all but abandoned when the multiple shares were showing up on the Windows XP systems. When the share suffixes showed up on AFP shares on the MacBook Pro, it was very disappointing. This workaround to the Leopard bug may rekindle the effort to establish a Leopard file server for Windows XP clients.
Thanks to a friend, that can fix all things computer, who revealed the dscl utility.
And personal thanks to Steph Mons

Antispam solution with per-user settings for JES4 ?

Hi,
We are currently installing JES4 for one of our clients. One of their questions is if there is software that can integrate with JES4 and that allows end-users to tweak their own anti-spam settings, f.ex. let them decide what is spam or not and how to treat it.
Ideally, it would mean a new tab in the webclient, so that they can specify their own settings as to what they consider to be antispam.
I don't know of any such tool, that's why i am asking here.
I know that brightmail can interface with jes, but as far as I can see, it's just a global filter without user-specific settings.
For the moment we are using spamassassin on our mail relays, which works quite well, but offers in our case no user-specific configuration.
Any ideas ?
I guess we might just as well tag the probable spam, and let them setup custom SIEVE rules to treat these messages, but I don't think this will be very flexible?
I'll be thankful for any input.
regards,
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we currently use a tool called PureMessage
its a mail filter that sits at our gateway and filters inbound and outbound. the latest version uses ldap userid and password for authentication into a personal "spam control" where the end-user can setup white/black lists etc.. It doesn't integrate with the client, but there are certainly some user configs.
the app will work directly with JES4 ( we use sendmail for SMTP traffic so I have not done the integration )
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Massive music library - need backup solutions

I have ripped everything I owned since CD's arrived in the early 80's, we're talking 200 GB and counting. I have a G4 MDD tower where my iTunes library exists. I have been backing this library up to a Maxtor 1-touch 300GB external. So far so good. Now I have a MacBook duocore and want to rip from this machine instead of the G4 (portability reasons).
I now have a seperate iTunes library for the MacBook and the G4. Is there a way to sync the two libraries? I have Airport Extreme-n, which networks wonderfully. I'm wondering if I can use the external drive as my main iTunes library and have both machines' iTunes app point to that drive? What if the drive isn't on, or if the MacBook is on the road - will I have to switch to another iTunes music locaton before using - and then have to switchback?
Trying to keep things simple.
G4 1.4 MMD Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBook DuoCore 2GB/160GB

One issue is that if you have two computers or user accounts running iTunes off the same library, what one iTunes does to the library the other one will not see. For example, if you delete a song off the hard drive with your Tower, when you then access the library from your MacBook, that song will still be listed but with an in front of it since the MacBook won't be able to find it.
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
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As to your question about the MacBook on the road, using the same technique you can start a new library on the MacBook and add a smaller subset of tunes from the main library folder on the external and allow itunes to copy them to the MacBook. Periodically you can update that by removing stuff and adding stuff. But at home you can open with OPTION key and choose the external. On the road, open with OPTION key and select the internal library. They won't be consolidated, but at least it gives you a few gigs of stuff you can carry around with you.
Patrick

HT204053 Need A Solution With An iCloud Problem So Can Somebody Please Help Me?

Can somebody please help me find a solution to my problem?
When I enter my username and password and hit enter I get this message, "The Apple ID is valid but is not an iCloud account" is the error message I receive implying that I do not have an iCloud account. I have searched and looked at the troubleshooting contents and I haven't found anything even close to this issue so I have come here for help. I appreciate any tips or tricks to fix my problem. Thank you for reading and look forward to hearing your answers.
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Lisa W.

Hey Lisa_AW!
If you want to make this Apple ID an iCloud account, try referencing the information here:
Creating an iCloud account: Frequently Asked Questions
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4436
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!
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It may not be what you want, but why can't you simply have the button call a method when pressed. That way, in your test code you can simply call that method.
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Welcome Find and share solutions with Apple users around the world Ask a Question

I ignored an emergency call on my iPhone 6, and the phone was disabled for three minutes. What is that all about? I am not even sure that the emergency call was legitimate.

Sorry - no clue what you are describing. Can you provide full detail of what happened, and how the title of your post is related?
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Is it possible to remove user interaction in a eventListener ?

Hi,
I am working on two scripts that both need to deal with the user interaction.
This following script works just fine. The only matter is that Indesign alerts me that the script prevented the UI dialog from opening.
What if I don't want any alert ?
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Loic

Assuiming NHTEST is a database link to the remote database connecting with SCOTT, use user_Tab_cols@NHTESTNicolas.

Experiences with backup solutions and dedupe?

Anybody running any of the backup solutions with dedupe functionality? Along the lines of Avamar, Data Domain, Commvault, etc?
We run 5 or more copies of our production databases as dev/test/qa type environments (created via rman duplicate), and was wondering if folks were seeing a significant decrease in backup space requirements due to deduped backups?
Or maybe they aren't working well?
Just looking for folks' experiences.
Thanks in advance!
Edited by: user10857037 on Mar 17, 2010 1:32 PM

Me too! Please let me know if you find anyone has tried Avamar dedup with RMAN. There is an article from EMC describing the processes.
http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h6540-oracle-backup-recovery-perform-avamar-rman-wp.pdf
Thanks.

Need backup solution with zero user interaction

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