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Development Server

We "highly" recommend that you set up a Jamf Pro development server testing jctl module or anything experimental or major changes on a development server before implementing it on your production server. In case something unexpected happens it only happens development server and NOT your production server.

For example, if you are a Jamf Cloud customer you can get a "sandbox" server that you can experiment and test things before moving to production. Or for on-premise instances, you get a "sandbox" license that you can set up in your server infrastructure.

Docker

Using Docker Desktop on a Mac system, you can set up a Jamf Pro "sandbox" using docker-compose, and you can quickly set up and teardown without additional server infrastructure.

See the following GitHub repository here for instructions on this process.

Or here is an in-depth presentation, Docker for Beginners by James Reynolds at the University of Utah, MacAdmins meeting.

Virtual Environments

If you want to test & experiment with jctl before promoting it to be installed into your system site directories, a virtual environment provides one option.

Installing in a virtual environment using pipenv

We are still learning, but to date, besides using a completely clean virtual machine or docker container, the best way we have found to deal with multiple pythons is to use pipenv.

  • Install pipenv: sudo pip3 install pipenv
  • Make a folder for your Pipfile: mkdir jctl ; cd jctl
  • Install Module & Requirements: pipenv install jctl
  • Activate the virtual environment: pipenv shell
  • On your Jamf Pro server create a Jamf Pro API User
  • Config: conf-python-jamf
  • Enter hostname, username, and password
  • Test: conf-python-jamf -t

Troubleshooting

Errors

Receiving errors using different aspects of jctl?

Here are some common errors and how to fix them:

Which jctl is Python using?

With Python having different locations where site-packages can be stored, it can be difficult to make sure that it is using the correct version. jctl is located in one of the site-package directories. To find the location we have to look at how Python uses site-packages. Python has a hierarchical list of directories it checks for the library.

The list can be found by using Python's site command.

python3 -m site
List Site-Package Directories

This produces the list of site-package directories Python checks.

% python3 -m site
sys.path = [
   '/Users/[UserAccountName]',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python38.zip',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/lib-dynload',
   '/Users/[UserAccountName]/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/aeosa',
   '/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/locket-0.2.1-py3.8.egg',
]
USER_BASE: '/Users/[UserAccountName]/.local' (exists)
USER_SITE: '/Users/[UserAccountName]/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages' (exists)
ENABLE_USER_SITE: True

The top directory in the list is the first place that Python tries to find the particular site-package. Perform a list on the directory and see if you find jctl there. Continue down the list until you have reached where pip has installed jctl for you.

To figure out where pip has installed jctl for you, use this command:

pip show jctl

In location it will display where PIP has installed jctl.

% pip show jctl
pip show jctl
Name: jctl
Version: 1.1.11
Summary: Command line tool that utilizes Python-Jamf
Home-page: https://github.com/univ-of-utah-marriott-library-apple/jctl
Author: The University of Utah
Author-email: [email protected]
License: MIT
Location: /Users/[UserAccountName]/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages
Requires: python-jamf
Required-by:

By the time that you have reached the pip installed directory, the other jctl should have been discovered.

Roadmap

Please see the Roadmap in the jctl wiki.

Contributing

Please see the Contribute page in the jctl wiki.