Disable Device Enrollment popup

 42 Responses »
May 182017
 

Recently my employer gave me a brand new MacBook. Never had one, but so far I’m impressed and I like it a lot. One thing to know is that MacBooks or MacOS in particular, are not supported by my employer. You can get one, but basically you’re on your own if something breaks (software, hardware is covered).

The first day of using the machine, I noticed a recurring popup, asking me to participate in my employers Device Enrollment Program. Which is weird. The device enrollment program enables organisations to remotely manage the device, so deployment of new software for example is made possible that way. But….MacOS is not supported by my employer, so why the popup?

After some inquiries I learned that I could “safely ignore the popup”. Right. Everytime an annoying popup, distracting me from what I am doing at that moment, cancelling it by clicking on it. And repeat that every ten minutes or so. Not the answer I was hoping for.

There is a way to disable the popup. You need administrator rights and it involves a couple of reboots, but after that, it’s gone. Here’s how.

– Reboot the machine in recovery mode. This can be done by pressing and holding COMMAND + R when the machine reboots
– In recovery mode choose Terminal from the Utilities menu
– In the terminal window, run the command “csrutil disable” and reboot the machine when asked
– After logging in, open a terminal window and give the following commands:
-> sudo mkdir /Library/LaunchAgentsDisabled
-> sudo mkdir /Library/LaunchDaemonsDisabled
-> sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ManagedClientAgent.enrollagent.plist /Library/LaunchAgentsDisabled/
-> sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ManagedClient.enroll.plist /Library/LaunchDaemonsDisabled/
– Now reboot the machine, again in Recovery mode by pressing and holding COMMAND + R while restarting
– From the Utilities menu start a Terminal again, and run the command “csrutil enable”. Reboot the machine when asked

This should do it. You can check if the popup is gone by issuing the following command in a Terminal window:

-> launchctl list | grep enroll

This should come up with no (empty) results.

The “csrutil” tool is to disable or enable the System Integrity Protection. You should re-enable it (so don’t skip the last step), because it gives your system an extra layer of protection.

Blog back online on my hosted server

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Feb 262016
 

My server was dead. Not even a little blink from one of the many LEDs in the system or some other sign of life when putting the power on it. So I figured that replacing parts would be like a puzzle. Is it the power supply? The motherboard? The CPU? Or a combination of any of the parts? Replacing one of them would easily cost me about 100 euro. So I did some math, and figured that hosting was not only a relatively cheap solution, it also has many advantages (that all of you IT people can list better than me).

I went with DirectNIC, since I have been using their services for over 15 years now.

And as you can see, it just works. I had to do some work to restore the WordPress database, since the last backup I had on my NAS disks was from the end of 2015. But with some diskswapping, file copying, MySql-dumping+importing and WP-CONFIG changing it now works.

I’m happy!

Successfully upgraded to WordPress 4.4

 No Responses »
Dec 262015
 

Since the server is back online (still going strong) WordPress began to nag me again about a new version being available 😛 So I decided to upgrade. WordPress itself and 3 plugins. Worked like a charm. No hangs or freezes. Yay! Guess buying new memory for the server will be on my to-do list right after Christmas.

Server problems – memory replaced

 No Responses »
Dec 252015
 

The server is having problems. Installed an extra NIC, to rule out problems with the onboard NIC, but that didn’t solve the problem. Removed the memory DIMMs now, and replaced them with two out of my desktop machine, since that had 4x4G and I don’t really use it at the moment. So they both now have 8GB internal memory. The desktop memory is Corsair Vengeance, the server memory was some value ram. Hopefully the Vengeance dimms will solve the system freezes.

S5 ordered

 No Responses »
Aug 222014
 

Just prolongated my KPN subscription and ordered the Samsung Galaxy S5. Samsung offers a free S-View cover and 32GB memory card until the end of the month, so if any of you (local) S5 owners is interested in the S-View cover, let me know.

CyanogenMod on a Sony XPeriaZ

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Jun 092014
 

I’ve used CyanogenMod before and was very satisfied with it. No bloatware, latest features and stable. Had it on my Motorola Droid (special version, since it’s not officially supported), on my Galaxy Nexus, I have it on my Galaxy S4 (my work phone) and after the latest KitKat update from Sony that drains the battery faster than a crackwhore needs her next shot, I decided to give in.

Bootloader unlock, which means a factory reset (you have to request the unlock key from Sony support). Which was the alleged solution to the battery problems anyway, so what could go wrong.

Enter Murphy.

My Windows 8.1 laptop does not recognize the XPeriaZ in fastboot mode. On neither USB port. Not with Android drivers, not with Sony drivers. Just an unknown device with a yellow exclamation mark in the device list. So I hooked up my phone on my Linux server. Yep. That just works.

CyanogenMod usually works perfectly with the ClockWorkMod recovery instructions. Boot in fastboot mode, flash the boot.img and reboot. Flash the custom rom image, and while your at it the Google Apps, and reboot and done. Not this time. The phone is stuck at the CM boot logo. Read the instructions again. Okay, mandatory “factory reset/wipe data” when doing a fresh CM install. I thought I did that, but hey, let’s restart. Flash boot.img, reboot, factory reset/wipe, install CM, install Google Apps. Reboot. Same thing: the CM boot logo. WTF?!

Google is your friend. I wasn’t the only one with this problem. Seems that the data partition made by Sony is encrypted in a way, and CWM does not wipe it properly or doesn’t wipe it at all. TWRP (TeamWin Recovery Project) should be able to do it properly. Next restart: flash the twrp image, reboot. Wow, nice GUI! No fiddling with the volume buttons, just point and click. Wipe the data partition/factory reset. Put the CM and Google Apps zip in the update queue (!) and flash them. Reboot. Wait. CM boot logo. Wait some more.

YES!!!! It asks for my PIN to unlock the SIM card.

Enter Google account credentials and……..oh wait. I have 2-factor authentication and the authenticator was …. on this phone. What now? Damn you Murphy. Turns out you can install the authenticator on another device, scan a barcode (the squares thingy) from a browser on your desktop and then it “moves” the authenticator to that device.
After that, I could succesfully login on my Google account with my fresh CyanogenMod installation.

Only to find that it does not automatically download all my apps. In fact, none of them. Ah well, at least it’s working again.

One more word: if you play games that are Google Play Games enabled, make sure you install Google Play Games first and then the games. Doing it the other way around will give you strange and unpredictable results. In The Gate for example, I got an “Download failed because you may not have purchased this app” which is very weird, since it’s a Free-2-Play game. Just uninstall, install Google Play Games, and then install your games.

Magic, isn’t that something!?

 No Responses »
Jan 042014
 

My receiver broke down. Well, not all of it. Everything worked, except sound. Pretty basic for a receiver if you ask me. I inquired what a repair would cost, but all I was quoted were the costs of taking the device in for investigation. I decided to give it some rest, and asked my friends for advice. Their most sane conclusion was just to do the repair, since replacing the receiver would be way more costly.

This evening I started watching a tv series, and switched from sound via the receiver to stereo sound via the tv. It’s an flatpanel tv, so I guess you know what difference that made. Yuck. But…better than no sound at all.

During watching, I started to notice an echo. Because I was too busy watching, too pulled in to what I was watching, I didn’t pay much attention to it. After I watched my series, I switched to digital radio, and -as a creature of habit- I turned up the volume by using the Logitech remote, not the remote from the tv. The volume did increase. It took a second for me to realize that…..I just turned up the volume of the receiver. The echo I had been hearing was coming from …. my receiver.

As by magic, it now works again. All channels have sound, all inputs work, all I now have to do is put the right “label” into each source again since I did a factory reset to make sure the receiver wasn’t stuck in some software loop or something.

So……until some scientific rational reason comes up, I am going to believe that it was magic that made my receiver work again. Isn’t that something?

FML!

 No Responses »
Jan 022014
 

In October my NAS disk broke down after the powerfailure. So I bought new disks. Last month (not even a week ago) my Windows system disk (SSD) died (unrecoverable). So I bought a new disk. Today my receiver gave in. No more sound. Everything works, except there is no sound. Factory reset (my receiver has that) didn’t work. So I’m guessing the pre-amp inside died, since it has 7 discrete amplifiers for each channel, so the problem must lie before it reaches these amplifiers.

WHY?

FML!

New disk and … Windows 8.1

 No Responses »
Dec 302013
 

The OCZ Vertex4 was diagnosed dead by the store/support center as well, but they don’t sell OCZ’s anymore. They offered me a replacement drive instead, and with a small extra payment I bought the Samsung 840 Pro 128GB.

And since I need to reinstall the whole shebang anyway, I bought Windows 8.1 as well.

New disk + Windows 8.1

New disk + Windows 8.1

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