Resources - univ-of-utah-marriott-library-apple/jctl GitHub Wiki

Presentations

2021.10.14 - JNUC 2021 - Turn 1000 clicks into 1 with python-jamf and jctl (video, slides)

We presented on python-jamf and jctl at the the Virtual JNUC 2021 on Thursday, Oct 21 at 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM MDT, titled Turn 1000 clicks into 1 with python-jamf and jctl. The presentation video & slides are available.

Since 2010, Apple IT, users, and InfoSec leaders from around the world have rallied at the Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) for community presentations, deep-dive education sessions, and expert product insights. Focusing on new and better ways to connect, manage and protect Apple devices that simplify workflows for IT and InfoSec and keep users productive. The Virtual JNUC 2021 experience will be October 19 - October 21, 2021, and there will be no cost to attend the online keynote and sessions. Anyone and everyone is invited to register for the virtual experience.

2023.01.29 - jctl – Jamf Pro Efficiency & Automation (video, slides)

jctl is a command line tool that allows you to read, create, edit, and delete Jamf Pro data. python-jamf is the Python library that powers jctl.

python-jamf interacts with Jamf Pro’s Classic API and hides all the details and complexity of retrieving, modifying, and uploading the Classic API data. Some people still use curl and shell CLI tools to parse and modify the raw Jamf Pro data. python-jamf converts all the data to Python dictionaries and arrays, so only a little bit of Python knowledge makes it extremely easy to do far more than curl and the shell can do like mass modify records and cross-reference records.

For example, once the preferences are configured, import python-jamf and then jamf.Computers() will give you an object that contains all the computers on your server. You can get an array of computers with a specific name with jamf.Computers().recordsWithName("mac"). Once you pick a computer, you can change some data by simply writing computer.data['general']['name'] = "old mac" and then saving it computer.save(). It’s really that easy.

This is made abundantly clear by the pkgctl tool, which was written very quickly, has only about 550 lines of code, and interactively goes through all of the packages stored in Jamf and allows you to “promote” packages, that is, swap one package for another in policies, patch management, and computer group criteria. Half of the pkgctl code is the interactive print and input statements. You can do a tremendous amount with very little code.

In this presentation, James Reynolds demonstrated jctl, pkgctl and a little bit of Python code showing how easy they are to use.