With the release of MacOS High Sierra we see that Apple has launched its new file system APFS.¬† This new file system is optimized for SSD drives and as part of the upgrade will automatically detect a SSD and update it to APFS file format.¬† If no SSD is found it will stick with HFS+ and continue with the installation.¬† This poses a problem for DeployStudio users who like to keep the number of system images to a minimum and keep the simplicity of deploying without adding custom pkg’s to the installer.
You can create a master DeployStudio image that will work on both SSD and non SSD’s computers alike,¬† here is how.¬† I created my image using a new iMac 2015 model with a 256 SSD.¬† First I restored a perfect image of 10.12.6 and then downloaded the MacOS High Sierra installer.¬† Here instead of running the installer I closed out and opened terminal.
In terminal run this command
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –volume /Volumes/Target –converttoapfs NO
This command is working for the official release of 10.13 and instructs the computer to skip the conversion.  This way you end up with a HFS+ version of 10.13 which you can then customize and send to your NetBoot Server.
Why is this necessary?¬† If you let the installer proceed without launching it with the flags –converttoapfs NO you will end up with a upgraded machine running APFS.¬†¬† This is a problem since APFS cannot boot on Apple machines without special firmware and further there is a check for spinning drives.¬† If the machine detects a spinning drive with APFS you will see that it fails to boot.¬† I am unsure why apple is not supporting APFS on older drives but this does appear to be the case.¬† My work around is just to continue using DeployStudio with HFS+ and all is well.
Part of the MacOS High Sierra installer contains new firmware which is designed to boot a Mac with a drive formatted for APFS.  This firmware is not included in the deploystudio image.   This means if you try creating an APFS image and restore it to a SSD mac running 10.12 or 10.11 it will not be able to boot without the firmware being custom added.  Again making sure to create the image as HFS+ gets around this issue and both SSD and spinning drives are able to boot.
Success PCI SSD running High Sierra with HFS+ Journaled / not APFS
This year District 228 has upgraded some core network infrastructure to utilize its fiber WAN connection now running at 1000mbps up/down.  This is a significant step forward in network bandwidth and really allows our district fleet of over 1100 Chromebooks, 500 iPads, and 300 Laptops/Desktops  to make full use of cloud based / internet based resources.
To make full use of 1000+ mbps speeds some network pieces needed to be upgraded. Our old network Firewall was a cisco ASDM 5520 which maxes out at 450mbp.  This device has been replaced with the Cisco ASDM 5545X which is capable of handling 2000mpbs up and down.
Part of this upgrade involved moving reconfiguring the device for the newer ASA software 9.2.2.  Upgrading from 7.x ASA software requires quite a few configuration changes however I found a cool tool that handles most of it for you https://fwm.cisco.com/auth.do.
This tool successfully converted my 8.2 ASA configuration to the newer format 9.2.2 almost perfectly.  I only had to make two minor changes and clear our a couple redundant lines.
To fully utilize 1000mbps speeds I changed our content filter to a new machine with upgraded specs.  We use the Untangle software running on a Dell PowerEdge R730 Server.  I have been happy with Untangle as a content filter along with providing a few additional security functions.  Our new Dell PowerEdge R730 has 64 Gigs of RAM and runs a Intel based SSD RAID 10 array which passes traffic with all modules loaded above 2000mbps.
With Wireless 802.11AC provided district wide and all device allowed access policy District 228 handles over 2500-3200 internet connected devices during a normal school day.
As of 8:20 AM today we have 2,685 internet devices currently active on our network.
A while back I used a cool online calendar program written in PHP which uses MySQL.  This Calendar product has not been supported for sometime and if you try to install it on newer machines you will get lots of PHP and MySQL errors.  I updated the installation files and the SQL installation script that sets up the database so that it functions on modern systems.
To install extract the zip file and place on your web server.  Look inside the config directory to find the cal_db.inc.php file.  This is where you setup the connection to a database for the calendar.
Here is the official instruction file as well.  I create the database in Phpmyadmin then run the SQL commands from the config directory in phpmyadmin to setup the database tables correctly.  That is about it.
Okay so Prezi makes nice looking easy presentations but they are made using a web interface and are flash based.  This makes sharing, downloading or viewing these presentations outside of Prezi.com a bit difficult.  Using built in software on a Mac along with an opensource project called soundflower you can convert a prezi (or for that matter anything on the web) into a easy to use movie file.
Using Quicktime you can do a New Screen Recording and draw a box around the content that you want to record.  This works great but has one major drawback.  This is capturing sound.
For example if you click on Quicktime and then do a new screen recording:
Now in the box that pops up click on the little triangle to view your audio options.
Notice the options are only NONE and Built-In-Microphone.
So the Built-in-Microphone would work but you will get terrible sound and further you will get background static, and room noise basically everything picked up by the mic.  Also recording from a speaker directly to a microphone sounds terrible.
Okay so what we need is a way to capture the audio stream perfectly and uninterrupted while capturing the screen.  Insert SoundFlower (https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/)
SoundFlower adds a audio interface into your System Preferences that allows you to direct the speaker output directly allowing you to copy it perfectly.  Here is how to use it.
(Just download the DMG and double click on the PKG installer inside.)
With SoundFlower installed you now can get redirect the output of your sound away from your speakers.
Okay so back to Prezi and capturing the presentation with Audio now that we have SoundFlower.   We need to go to System Preferences and choose Sound.
Now you change your OUTPUT to SoundFlower 2ch.
Okay now that you have redirected your output you will no longer hear any sounds.  This is okay and you can change back to Internal speakers after your done capturing the video.
Now get your Prezi presentation ready to play and go to Quicktime and do a new screen recording.  This time notice when you click on the little triangle to change audio you now see SoundFlower 2CH.
With the Soundflower 2ch checked now click on Record, drag a box around your prezi presention and start it it up.  When the presentation is done stop the screen recording by clicking on the little stop button on the top of your screen.
Stop button is square in the circle
Okay so when you are done with the screen recording you just need to clean up the start and the finish so that it looks nicer.¬† To do this use QuickTime’s Trim feature.¬† This feature is awesome and is often overlooked and unknown.
Just go to EDIT | TRIM
Now you can move the sliders on either side of the video to cut off the ackward beginning and the ackward finish (the part where you stop the screen recording) so that you are left with just a nice movie.
Click and drag on either side of the Yellow box to adjust the start and end of the video
Okay before you play your final movie you need to redirect the sound back to the speakers.  Otherwise you will not hear anything because all sound is still going to SoundFlower.  So go back to System Preferences | Sound and now choose for Output,  Internal Speakers.
Putting Sound back to your speakers.
With your trimmed video you can save it to your desktop then upload to Youtube.  Or you can use another great open source project like Handbrake to shrink the file and put on a disk, email it, or do whatever you like.
(Here is a link to another Post I made on shrinking videos https://www.gcsdstaff.org/roodhouse/?p=3598)
Wait, not that I am all done couldn’t I do this same method to capture video or content from anywhere……?
If you have updated your WordPress site to latest version and you use the JWPlayer version 6 you may have run across and error where your videos do not play.  This is because of an slight error in one file on the JWPlayer which makes it incompatible with the newer WordPress.
Good news is you do not have to update to JWPlayer Version 7 if you don’t want to you can simply fix the one selected line of code or download my modified version of the plugin which is already fixed.
If you are not wanting to get stuck in the subscription model of smart software I don’t blame you.¬¨‚Ć Unfortunately the last version of Smart Notebook that does not require a subscription is version 11 and can be downloaded as part of the educational software of 2013.¬¨‚Ć Newer version of OS X (Yosemite and El Captian) come with Ruby installed at version 2.0, where smart notebook 11 requires version 1.8.
To fix or to get this version of Smart Notebook software to work on the newer OS X you can copy the old ruby files and copy them to the ruby framework found  in /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions.  Or an easier method is to simply use this package after you install.
I have had trouble finding the IP Ranges that Google uses in the past.  Here is my current most up to date list of IP Ranges used by Google exclusively.
64.233.160.0/19
Range:
64.233.160.0 to
64.233.191.255
216.239.32.0/19
Range:
216.239.32.0 to
216.239.63.255
66.249.80.0/20
Range:
66.249.64.0 to
66.249.95.255
72.14.192.0/18
Range:
72.14.192.0 to
72.14.255.255
209.85.128.0/17
Range:
209.85.128.0 to
209.85.255.255
66.102.0.0/20
Range:
66.102.0.0 to
66.102.15.255
74.125.0.0/16
Range:
74.125.0.0 to
74.125.255.255
64.18.0.0/20
Range:
64.18.0.0 to
64.18.15.255
207.126.144.0/20
Range:
207.126.144.0 to
207.126.159.255
173.194.0.0/16
Range:
173.194.0.0 to
173.194.255.255
The new Mac OS X 10.11 has a new feature called  System Integrity Protection (SIP).  The Promethean Driver for 10.10 does not pass this check so must be installed with SIP disabled first.  Here i show to do this.
———-
To Fix:
1.  Restart in Recovery mode (Command-R at startup) and launch a terminal.
Then type the following line: csrutil disable
2.  Then reboot by typing reboot
3.  Reinstall the software ActivDriver Os X Version 10.10
4.  restart back into Recovery mode and type csrutil clear in the terminal.
Thats it your promethean board should now work like normal.
Okay I have a hit or miss relationship with browser extensions. ¬¨‚ĆOften the culprit of a malfunctioning browser is a bad extensions like a “coupon printer” or another piece of malware that is disguised as a browser improvement. ¬¨‚ĆWith this disclaimer I do like the following four Extensions.
Using a Mac a great way to use extensions is to use two Chrome based browsers.  I use Chromium from here  and Google Chrome from here.
What is great about these two browsers is they are almost identical but keep their extensions separate.  So you can use Chromium for example and load all four of my extensions above and then keep Google Chrome as an extension free unmodified browser that you can fall back on if a page does not load correctly.  This way I use Chromium 99% of the time with these extensions and when I find a rare site that does not work I simply load it in Google Chrome.
Here are my Big Three Browsers.  You can see that I have Google Chrome (which I leave extension and app free) and Chromium which I use primary for most web activities.