This is the seventh part of a twelve-day series on my new year’s resolutions to become a better Mac admin. During these twelve days my book “Packaging for Apple Administrators” is on sale! (Previous Post: “Automate”)
I have already mentioned open source projects in previous days’ articles. There is a great and vibrant open source community among Mac admins. You can take part by just using the tools, but if you got into git and GitHub (follwing the Day 4 resolution) you can also, fork and extend and contribute.
Some projects are larger and complex, others are just quick simple tools.
– Munki: open source Mac management system
– autopkg: automate package download and creation
– Imagr: automate netboot installation
– AutoDMG: automate system image creation
– AutoCasperNBI and AutoImagrNBI: creates netboot image sets for Casper and Imagr
– BSDPy: cross-platform NetBoot alternative
– NoMAD: alternative Active Directory connection without permanent binding
– outset: provides hooks for login and startup scripts
– ProfileCreator: (still early development) UI tool to build configuration profiles
– micromdm and commandment: both still in development, open source projects to create MDM servers
– osquery: cross-platform endpoint monitoring
This list is far from complete. There are so mnay other interesting tools. Tim Sutton has a longer list just for Python MacAdmin tools.