The Geeky Gordo

To say that I’m a huge fan of JAMF Software‘s Casper Suite is probably putting it lightly.  I love it, and one of the features I love is the ability to use Extension Attributes for gather information. In the old days of Casper we had no real way of gathering things like Flash version and storing it in an easy to get to place.  Along came Extension Attributes and we were now able to store that version information right in the

As I work on upgrading to 9.2, I am doing a clean installation of the JSS and not importing my previous database.  In the process I am only taking over packages, policies, scripts, etc, that I want on the new server.  So I thought I would do a quick post on some of my favorite Extension Attributes and what I use them for.

“X” Plug-in Version

It seems like about once every two or three months a question comes across the JAMF Nation list about how to grab the version of Flash, or Silverlight, or name your application or plug-in.  Here’s how I grab those versions:

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7346191

From that script we can start to swap out different plug ins.  The magic is the “defaults read” statement that grabs the version information from the Info.plist file in each plug-in.  For example, if we wanted Silverlight, we’d use:

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7346262

And so on.  Pretty easy to use this to grab version information from different apps.

Display Serial Number

I used to hate having to inventory Apple Cinema Displays because you’d have to tip them up or lay them flat to read the barcode.  With this EA you can have Casper do the work for you:

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7346277

Keyboard or Mouse Battery Percentage

Do you want to know when the batteries are getting low on your Apple keyboard or mouse:

Keyboard:  https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9135830

Mouse:  https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9135844

Warranty Status

I can’t take credit for this one, but it is in the script.  Need to grab the warranty status of your equipment:

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9135868

These are only a few of the Extension Attributes I’ve moved over to the new server.  JAMF did a good job of including a lot of pre-built EAs in version 9 of Casper.  Make sure to check them out and implement the ones that you need.