serial

How To: Deploy MS Office to Mac

Posted by Rick on in Microsoft, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Deploy MS Office to Mac

One of the biggest pains in deploying MS Office to OS X in a business or education environment is making sure that the serial number deploys too.

To do this, you need to also deploy the following files:

~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.error_reporting.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.setupassistant.plist

Deploying these files will keep also keep the initial setup assistant from running upon first launch.

Deployment can be via any of your normal methods, Apple Remote Desktop being the “Apple Preferred Way,” of course.

How To: Check Apple Warranty Status via ARD

Posted by Rick on in Apple, Technology How To's 6 Comments

How To: Check Apple Warranty Status via ARD

Here is an awesome little script by Scott Russell of the University of Notre Dame. Using the “send Unix command” in Apple Remote Desktop, it can pull the system’s serial number, send the information to Apple’s Warranty Website and then tell you if the machine is under warranty.

#!/bin/bash

# warranty.sh
# Description: looks up Apple warranty info for this computer, or one
specified by serial number on the command-line

# Written by: Scott Russell, IT Support Engineer, University of Notre
Dame
# Created on: Sat Jan 5 16:20:54 EST 2008
# Last Modified: Thu Sep 25 09:29:11 EDT 2008

###############
## GLOBALS ##
###############

WarrantyTempFile="/tmp/warranty.txt"
PlistFile="/Library/Preferences/edu.ND.DSSBranding"

if [[ $# == 0 ]] ; then
SerialNumber=`system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep "Serial Number"
| awk -F': ' {'print $2'} 2>/dev/null`
else
SerialNumber="${1}"
fi

[[ -n "${SerialNumber}" ]] && WarrantyInfo=`curl -k -s
"https://selfsolve.apple.com/Warranty.do?serialNumber=${SerialNumber}&countr
y=USA&fullCountryName=United%20States" | awk '{gsub(/","/,"n");print}' |
awk '{gsub(/":"/,":");print}' > ${WarrantyTempFile}`

#################
## FUNCTIONS ##
#################

GetWarrantyValue()
{
grep -w "${1}" ${WarrantyTempFile} | awk -F ':' {'print $2'}
}

###################
## APPLICATION ##
###################

echo "$(date) ... Checking warranty status"
InvalidSerial=`grep "serial number provided is invalid"
"${WarrantyTempFile}"`
#echo "InvalidSerial == ${InvalidSerial}"

if [[ -e "${WarrantyTempFile}" && -z "${InvalidSerial}" ]] ; then
echo " Serial Number == ${SerialNumber}"

PurchaseDate=`GetWarrantyValue PURCHASE_DATE`
echo " PurchaseDate == ${PurchaseDate}"

WarrantyExpires=`GetWarrantyValue COVERAGE_DATE`
echo " WarrantyExpires == ${WarrantyExpires}"

ProductDescription=`GetWarrantyValue PROD_DESCR`
echo " ProductDescription == ${ProductDescription}"
else
[[ -z "${SerialNumber}" ]] && echo " No serial number was found."
[[ -n "${InvalidSerial}" ]] && echo " Warranty information was
not found for ${SerialNumber}."
fi

exit 0