Danny Sears | Small Business Tech Tips

Did you know that it’s possible to turn your Mac computer into a wifi hotspot without any 3rd party software?

It’s super easy and you can even password protect.

Here’s how!

Open System Preferences from the Apple drop down menu at the top left of the screen

Click on the “Sharing” pane

From the drop down ” Share your connection from:” Select Ethernet”…note: you can choose multiple items here to use!

Check mark “Wifi” in the box below and click “WiFi” options

Choose your encryption type and enter a password to give to your peers

Save and check the box next to “Internet Sharing” on the left hand side.

That’s it! You are now your own own hot spot..

note: You can do this with tethered cell phones as well..Refer to your carrier’s instructions for this.

Have fun!

December 12, 2011 Danny Sears 0

iVPN - our SAVIOR for Apple Lion Servers’ Terrible VPN

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Since the release of Lion Server, PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol), the most popular VPN protocol, has been a nightmare.

Apple removed the GUI used to configure PPTP for Windows connectivity, and asked that users setup via the sudo server command in Terminal. And it… DOESN’T AUTHENTICATE! I’ve worked recently with a consortium of other Apple consultants, all of us working to get this resolved, and we have, but the fixes are not user friendly, which is exactly what Apple Server is supposed to be.

After doing a ton of research, I’ve stumbled upon this fantastic App…iVPN.

iVPN gives you everything you would need from a VPN server on a Mac. A nice interface and options to integrate with Open Directory. No more terminal commands and registry hacks! This is definitely the solution for you if you’re looking for an easy fix to this plaguing omission of VPN management in Lion Server. At only $25 price tag, you can’t beat it!

December 5, 2011 Danny Sears 3

Apple Address Book for Lion - Unable to Search Your Contacts Since iCloud? Here’s the Fix!

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Hey all,

So Apple released 10.7.1 with iCloud. Cool!

I installed and updated my Mobile Me over to iCloud and was off to the races! Nice!

The next time I went to open my Address Book and search for a contact, I entered the name of the contact, and NOTHING HAPPENED!

I tried removing the plist files, the address book application support data in the “now hidden” user library.

Nothing worked.

This must have something to do with the update of course!

Turns out the fix is easy, but elusive until you find it.

Here it is!

Open up System Preferences and click on “iCloud”
Next, uncheck “Contacts” in the pane on the right, and select “Keep Contacts”
Reboot your computer!
Follow the same procedure, and this time, check “Contacts” and Merge your contacts with the cloud

That’s it! You should be all set and able to search again!

November 29, 2011 Danny Sears 0

Apple Quick Tip! - Show all System Preferences in a Hurry!

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For all you Mac users, you are most likely familiar with System Preferences, your “Control Panel” for the Mac. Many of you who use it know of the “Show All” button on the top of the window, where you can bring all preference panes back to the front for customization of your Mac. What you may “NOT” know is that if you click and hold on this “Show All” button, you can display the System Preferences in a drop down, giving you quicker access to all of the panes, and customization options where you can decide what is to be shown or not in System Preferences. Click & Hold, and Enjoy!

November 25, 2011 Danny Sears 0

Domain Admins! Join a computer to your domain REMOTELY!

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Hey there domain administrators. Did you know it was possible to join a computer to your domain remotely? Not so hard at all.

First, you must have VPN configured on your network. Your VPN can be configured directly to your firewall, or through your firewall to your Windows Server Routing and Remote Access. (How to setup PPTP on a Windows Server)

Once you’ve configured your VPN, you are now ready to join computers to the domain remotely.

First, connect to the VPN, so that your computer receives a local IP address from your network.

Next, open your computer properties to join to domain as you normally would internally. Attempt to join your computer to the domain. It will prompt you for domain admin credentials if your route has worked, and woila! your are now joined. Reboot the computer.

If you don’t get the prompt for domain admin credentials, that most likely means you are not able to ping the domain controller via hostname, and you will need to manually edit your hosts file.

To do this:

Goto: C:\Windows\Syste32\drivers\etc
Open your hosts file with Wordpad “Run as Administrator”. You may need to open Wordpad as an administrator first, and then open the file
Goto the bottom of your hosts file and enter the following: ”IP Address”, Tab 2 X’s, “server name” - where the IP address is the IP of your Domain Controller, and the Server Name is the host name of your Domain Controller.
Save the hosts file

Now try joining your computer to the domain again. This should work for you.

Good luck!