Rename Mac Script
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Posted on
02-23-2018
04:56 AM
- last edited on
03-04-2025
05:21 AM
by
kh-richa_mig
I want to build a script that will find the local user excluding the local admin and use it to rename the Mac,
Example:
John Doe has a MacBook Air with a serial number C02FM2JEGTF1
The account name is his full name John Doe and his username is in our domain format first3 first last name.
I would like the name to be
johdoe-MBA-GTF1
Any ideas on how to do this?

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Posted on 02-23-2018 08:55 AM
I can think how you would get close to this, but you might need a lookup table of some sort to change the computer to MBA. I've assumed the only accounts are your support account and the user.
#!/bin/sh
product_name=$(ioreg -l | awk '/product-name/ { split($0, line, """); printf("%s
", line[4]); }')
serial_no=$(ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice -d 2 | awk -F" '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{print $(NF-1)}' | tail -c 5)
user_name=$(ls "/Users/" | grep -v '^[.*]' | grep -v 'Shared' | grep -v 'SupportAccount')
computer_name="${user_name}-${product_name}-${serial_no}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set LocalHostName "${computer_name}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set ComputerName "${computer_name}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set HostName "${computer_name}"

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Posted on 02-23-2018 09:00 AM
I'm sure you can cobble something together between the script above and my script which renames a machine based on the username in the User and Location tab:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -e "/Library/Preferences/com.jamfsoftware.jamf.plist" ]; then
jssURL=$(defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.jamfsoftware.jamf.plist jss_url)
else
echo "No JSS server set. Exiting..."
exit 1
fi
# Define API username and password information & JSS Group name from passed parameters
if [ ! -z "$4" ]; then
apiUser="$4"
else
echo "No value passed to $4 for api username. Exiting..."
exit 1
fi
if [ ! -z "$5" ]; then
apiPass="$5"
else
echo "No value passed to $5 for api password. Exiting..."
exit 1
fi
SERIAL=$(ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice -d 2 | awk -F" '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{print $(NF-1)}')
USERINFO=$(curl -k ${jssURL}JSSResource/computers/serialnumber/${SERIAL}/subset/location -H "Accept: application/xml" --user "${apiUser}:${apiPass}")
USERNAME=$(echo $USERINFO | /usr/bin/awk -F'<username>|</username>' '{print $2}' | tr [A-Z] [a-z])
DEVICEINFO=$(curl -k ${jssURL}JSSResource/computers/serialnumber/${SERIAL}/subset/hardware -H "Accept: application/xml" --user "${apiUser}:${apiPass}")
MODEL=$(echo $DEVICEINFO | /usr/bin/awk -F'<model_identifier>|</model_identifier>' '{print $2}')
if [ -z "$USERNAME" ]
then
USERNAME="$SERIAL"
fi
if echo "$MODEL" | grep -q "MacBookAir"
then
PREFIX="MBA"
elif echo "$MODEL" | grep -q "MacBookPro"
then
PREFIX="MBP"
else
echo "No model identifier found."
PREFIX=""
fi
COMPUTERNAME="${USERNAME}-${PREFIX}"
COMPUTERNAME=`echo ${COMPUTERNAME:0:15}`
echo "Setting computer name to $COMPUTERNAME"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set ComputerName "$COMPUTERNAME"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set LocalHostName "$COMPUTERNAME"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set HostName "$COMPUTERNAME"
dscacheutil -flushcache
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Posted on 03-09-2018 05:30 AM
Say I want to exclude users admin account from the users how would I do that?
Example johdoe also may have an account called johdoeadmin. I don't want the mac to be named johdoejohdoeadmin-last4serial
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Posted on 03-12-2018 10:50 AM
I created this, but it doesn't seem to work when I create it into a policy. I ran it on 20 macs today and they all said that it completed but the name is still messed up. I even added the update inventory after the script is done.

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Posted on 03-12-2018 10:58 AM
@kericson You may want to write to some logs to see what's going on. Also, try running it locally on one of them to see if it operates as expected.
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Posted on 03-12-2018 11:30 AM
+1 for running it locally to see what it's doing, but when you do that add a
--verbose
to get more info on it. Something like
sudo sh --verbose /path/to/script.sh
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Posted on 03-12-2018 11:35 AM
Also - post the script you tried.
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Posted on 03-13-2018 08:07 PM
Here is my script which runs and works when run locally.
#!/bin/sh
serial_no=$(ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice -d 2 | awk -F" '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{print $(NF-1)}' | tail -c 5)
user_name=$(ls "/Users/" | grep -v '^[.*]' | grep -v '.admin' | grep -v 'Administrator' | grep -v 'administrator'| grep -v 'Guest' | grep -v 'Shared')
computer_name="${user_name}-${serial_no}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set LocalHostName "${computer_name}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set ComputerName "${computer_name}"
/usr/sbin/scutil --set HostName "${computer_name}"
dscacheutil -flushcache
