Technology

2

Asus Prime x570 Pro Temperatures in unRAID 6.9.1

Posted on 10th March 2021

unRAID 6.9.1 has finally been released into the wild. With it, an updated Linux kernel (5.10.21). This adds adds the ability to allow some of us running Ryzen processors to access CPU and Motherboard temperatures. Your mileage may still vary depending on the motherboard you are running however. For example, some Asus boards use the Asus WMI module while other x570 boards may require the nct6687 module. These example modules are not readily available in unRAID and are not covered in this article.

But for those of us on the Asus Prime x570 Pro, there is minimal work needed. This board utilizes the nct6775 kernel module included in unRAID 6.9.1, but requires we modify the boot arguments in order for it to detect fan and temperature sensors. Once the appropriate argument is added, and a reboot of the system is done, you should see the sensors in the “Dynamix System Temp” add-on. Installation of the add-on is not discussed in this article, but can be installed via “Community Applications“. You may also want to read this article on Setting up CPU and board temperature sensing before going forward.

0

Apple DEP/Apple Device Enrollment Debug Log

Posted on 16th June 2020

When building DEP Pre-Stage enrollments, you may wish to have eyes on some advanced logging output. We can turn on Debug mode for DEP/ADE on a per-machine basis by doing the following to that machine.

  1. Boot the machine into recovery mode after you have completed a clean install of the OS. (CMD + R at boot).
  2. Once booted, go to Utilities -> Terminal.
  3. Run the following 4 commands:
    • defaults write /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd EnableDetailedLogging -bool TRUE
    • defaults write /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.MCXDebug debugOutput -2
    • defaults write /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.MCXDebug collateLogs 1
    • touch /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/MDM_EnableDebug
  4. Quit Terminal and reboot the machine and begin your enrollment process. You will see a new log that will output to /Library/Logs/ManagedClient/ManagedClient.log

Once you have generated the log, you can disable the debugging mode by opening terminal while normally booted and logged into the OS.

  • sudo rm -f /var/db/MDM_EnableDebug
  • sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.MCXDebug.plist

Hopefully this helps you easily discover what is causing your enrollment process to fail.

0

iPhone 8 (Plus) and iPhone X – Opinion

Posted on 13th September 2017

I have not spent much time in the consumer end of the technology market in the last few years due to my enterprise role I currently have, but did manage to follow the developments leading to the release of Apple’s new products yesterday.

I still remember 10 years ago. I was living in New York City, and Apple had announced that they were making a smart phone. Even with the success of the classic ipod (not so classic at the time), it was hard to imagine what the new phone would look like. I remember people posting online (pre-reddit?) mockups of what it would look like. Basically, it was suppose to look like an iPod with a slightly bigger screen and all the other things needed to make it a phone. Various mockups can be found here. The mockup I remember the most, is the third one; the Blackberry look alike.

0

2015 Ohio LinuxFest

Posted on 12th August 2015

Ohio LinuxFest 2015

Some of you know that I helped this great organization back in the early 2000s. This event marks the 13th year of it’s existence! And to add to the greatness, a good friend of mine Jorge Castro is doing a keynote!

If you are interested in Open Source and Linux, then this event is worth the trip. Plus, it is free for the basic attendance package.

Head over to their website and register!

2

Fix iMessage on Yosemite

Posted on 17th March 2015

Apple-logoFirst off, Happy St. Patricks Day!

It has been a question that many Hackintoshers have been trying to solve since the release of the Yosemite betas last year. How do we get iMessages to work? Many have tried and many have failed. What has seemed to lack is a good comprehensive guide covering a wide range of scenarios.

This guide over at Tonymacx86 is a pretty detailed resources and should help you get your setup going. You are best to use the Clover Bootloader as is seems to handle the manual values as well as NVRAM much better then Chimera/Chameleon. I will note the chapter I followed for each setting in my setup.

Anytime I would try to sign in to Messages, I would get the “An error occurred during activation. Try again.” message. This was good news for me since I just had to make sure Clover had the right serial numbers and so on. Some situations will still require you to call in to Apple to have them whitelist your serial and some other values. For my situation, all I needed to make sure I had valid was:

  • Product Name (SMBIOS and found one matching my hardware using MacTracker) Chapter 4.2
  • Serial Number (Generating one in Clover Configurator and verifying at Apple Selfsolve) Chapter 4.1
  • SmUUID (Generating a random one using uuidgen in the terminal even to know my board did not exhibit the Sid bug) Chapter 5
  • ROM (Using MAC Address of my ethernet minus the colons) Chapter 7.1
  • MLB (Serial number that I generated plus 5 random alpha/numeric characters) Chapter 7.1

I also made sure that all of my configs for iMessage and iCloud were deleted prior to doing anything as to make sure I started as fresh as possible. (Chapter 3.3)

Note on the SmUUID. It is better to generate a unique SmUUID and not assume that your motherboards will work with Apple’s servers. Just run uuidgen from the terminal 4 or 5 times and use that value in Clover Configurator. Also make sure, as is detailed in chapter 3.2, that your ethernet and wifi are labeled as enX and showing as Built-In for this to work right.

Once all of these were set up with correct values, I did need to change my Apple ID password. Once reset, I was able to login and send/receive iMessages once again. Once you have correct values, you will want to always use these with your particular motherboard/cpu combination as to not blacklist that system in the future as long as Apple does not change their verification process again.

And finally, a big shout out to jaymonkey who has spent countless hours keeping his guide up to date. Without his collection of information, iMessages would not be functioning on Yosemite Hackintoshes.