Commands

In Fleet you can run MDM commands to take some action on your macOS hosts, like restart the host, remotely.

If a host is offline when you run a command, the host will run the command the next time it comes online.

Custom commands

You can run a custom commands and view a specific command's results using the fleetctl command-line interface.

To run a custom command, we will do the following steps:

Create a .xml with the request payload
Choose a target host
Run the command using fleetctl
View our command's results using fleetctl

Step 1: create a `.xml` file

You can run any command supported by Apple's MDM protocol as a custom command in Fleet. To see the list of possible commands, head to Apple's Commands and Queries documentation.

The "Erase a device" and "Lock a device" commands are only available in Fleet Premium

Each command has example request payloads in XML format. For example, if we want to restart a host, we'll use the "Restart a Device" request payload documented by Apple here.

To run the "Restart a device" command, we'll need to create a restart-device.xml file locally and copy and paste the request payload into this .xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Command</key>
    <dict>
        <key>RequestType</key>
        <string>RestartDevice</string>
    </dict>
    <key>CommandUUID</key>
    <string>0001_RestartDevice</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Step 2: choose a target host

To run a command, we need to specify a target host by hostname. Commands can only be run on a single host in Fleet.

To find a host's hostname, choose the "Fleet UI" or "fleetctl" method and follow the steps below.

Fleet UI:

Head to the Hosts page in Fleet and find your target host.
Make sure the Hostname column is visible (select Edit columns if not) and find your host's hostname. You'll need this hostname to run the command.

A host must be enrolled to Fleet and have MDM turned on to run an command against it.

fleetctl CLI:

Run the fleetctl get hosts --mdm command to get a list of hosts that are enrolled to Fleet and have MDM turned on.
Find your host's hostname. You'll need this hostname to run the command.

Step 3: run the command

Run the fleetctl mdm run-command --payload=restart-device.xml --host=hostname

Replace the --payload and --host flags with your .xml file and hostname respectively.

Look at the on-screen information. In the output you'll see the command required to see results. Be sure to copy this command. If you don't, it will be difficult to view command results later.

Step 4: View the command's results

Run the fleetctl get mdm-command-results --id=<insert-command-id>
Look at the on-screen information.

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