Posts on Mark Kenny

Virtualising macOS

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:27:00 +0200

Inspired by Rob Potvin’s MacAdmins presentation and baking guide on virtualising macOS on Apple Silicon, I moved beyond standard UTM setups to explore a repeatable pipeline using Tart, Packer, and Ansible—fully “variablising” the workflow for automated VM builds.

Most guides rely on default admin/admin credentials, so I reworked the Packer templates to accept dedicated user configurations and Jamf Pro enrollment settings, while navigating Apple’s updated build orders and setup screens.

180 Mounter

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 12:00:00 +0100

So back in the good old days of macOS, when I ran a little Jamf at my old agency 180, you could launch an AFP link from web browser. So rather than populating ‘Connect to Server’ shortcuts or filling the dock or a folder with links, we added Jamf bookmark, embedded in Self Service for mounting all the network shares.

It was only three or four file servers as we had an old and new production server at the time, as well as AFP shares from our XSAN, And then moved links from production, supported storage to read-only archive on slower storage with no support contract. We could update links here and all staff could mount all shares from a single place; Self Service.

My Homelab

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

I’ve been “home labbing” for a good few years now, way before I even heard of r/homelab! I started as I had ‘needs’ and didn’t want to leave my primary workstation running all the time. (Apple eMac with external 15″ TV connected via composite video adapter).

My first I guess was my G4 MacMini I had plugged in to my TV with VGA. I had a Elgato EyeTV 200 connected by FireWire 400 and a matching external drive. All video was there, and I kept my audio on the eMac in iTunes as I only had WiFi at home.

My Jamf Scripts on GitHub

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0100

I don’t have much, and most is re-hashes of other folks code. But by stitching things together I’ve put together a few tools. Could be useful for folks…

https://github.com/markkenny/jamf

I also have a couple of recipes on Autopkg. Tag me for mistakes. I will fix them.

https://github.com/autopkg/markkenny-recipes