tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-159494072011-08-16T21:01:18.382-06:00Technical notes for Mac OS XBryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17173573669312088630noreply@blogger.comBlogger131100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1152069100599560192006-07-04T21:04:00.000-06:002006-07-04T21:21:52.406-06:00

OverviewA number of sites/posts/blogs/etc have recently reported about Apple's new "phone home" feature in Dashboard, added with 10.4.7. While any feature like this really should be optional, and off by default, this will discuss more of the what than what's wrong.Read on for more detailThe PiecesThere are several pieces to this advisory stuff. There is the mach_init part,

Bryannoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1141346828324885412006-03-02T17:43:00.000-07:002006-04-17T01:39:35.826-06:00

OverviewSince 10.4, using the >console login from the login window has been, at best, sporadic. Many times, the error "Operation not supported by device" for /dev/console will be given. Here is a kludge to make it work, but must be repeated anytime the machine is restarted.Read on for more detailttysFirst, you must login as a normal user through the login window. Once here, open up a Terminal

Bryannoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1132187046597209102005-11-16T17:18:00.000-07:002005-11-16T17:34:32.236-07:00

OverviewFinding all the preferences a given application uses can be done very easily for a Cocoa-based application. All it takes is a bit of debuggerry (with gdb in this case).This allows one to find all the various preferences, but not how they are used. Use can be found either by inferring from the preference name, or when it is unhelpful, actually changing the value for the given preference

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1129012740490200972005-10-11T00:33:00.000-06:002005-10-11T00:41:26.916-06:00

OverviewSpotlight currently has only minimal configuration options: result types to show and their order, and a list of folders not to search. Other folders can be searched which aren't by default, but this option is not exposed through System Preferences.There are currently three property list files (.plist) which control Spotlight: _IndexPolicy.plist, _exclusions.plist, and _rules.plist.These

Bryannoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1128235297540029712005-10-02T00:36:00.000-06:002005-10-02T00:54:00.760-06:00

OverviewMac OS X has a centralized preferences system (stuff in ~/Library/Preferences) which, for some apps, contains hidden settings. Some of these can be quite useful, interesting, or annoying. This is coverage of such settings for Safari and the underlying WebKit.First, a warning. None of these settings are in any way guaranteed to work after this is written, nor are they safe from blowing

Bryannoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1127460138981453652005-09-23T01:20:00.000-06:002005-09-23T01:57:52.020-06:00

OverviewThe 2005-008 (for 10.4.2) security update modifies several OS components: CoreServices' CoreTypes and SecurityAgent, ApplicationServices' ImageIO and QD frameworks, Message framework, System framework, prebinding info, ruby's xmlrpc, and securityd.Read on for more detailCoreServicesTwo bits are updated here: the CoreTypes bundle and the SecurityAgent app.CoreTypes bundleCoreTypes.bundle

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1127197098133830932005-09-20T00:09:00.000-06:002005-09-20T00:36:38.556-06:00

OverviewThe login window application (/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app) is what runs the login window (hey, something actually logical here). It has a few "special" accounts which start with the greater-than sign (>) and need no password. These have been documented in various locations, practically since 10.0, so this article will also show how to try and find new ones whenever

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1126929152887279152005-09-16T21:50:00.000-06:002005-09-16T21:57:05.763-06:00

To anyone who's noticed an odd slowdown in ssh since the 2005-007 security update on 10.4.x, and you've seen gssapi-with-mic in a verbose use of ssh, your problem may be that you don't need the GSSAPI authentication stuff enabled.To test this theory, try running ssh -o GSSAPIAuthentication=no hostname to see if things work faster. If so, you can add the lineGSSAPIAuthentication noto your ~/.ssh/

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1126482312992491072005-09-11T17:41:00.000-06:002005-09-11T17:45:12.996-06:00

For anyone trying to make IPSec work between Mac OS X (at least on 10.4.2) and OpenBSD (3.7), note that you need to be careful when choosing your cryptographic algorithm. Among the choices both OS's offer is AES (aka Rijndael), in the standard key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits. 128 bits is fine, but it seems (in my testing) that using AES-192 or AES-256 just does not work between Mac OS X and

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1126426327205233752005-09-11T02:03:00.000-06:002005-09-11T02:12:07.210-06:00

If (on 10.4.x) you've added a new group and/or added a user to a group via NetInfo Manager (or the command line), but things like id don't seem to show that group, the problem may be a daemon called memberd.This daemon (I believe new with 10.4) is a helper for group memberships (see the manpage for memberd for full information).To tell it to reset its cache (so it sees new stuff), simplysudo /usr

Bryannoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1125990677333641212005-09-08T01:06:00.000-06:002005-09-08T21:20:11.236-06:00

OverviewThere are several methods one can use to make sure ssh-agent is running for you and that other Aqua apps can take advantage of it. This describes the one I use, which is simply two files: one to setup the environment for all Aqua apps, and one which is automatically run when a Terminal (or xterm, or iTerm, etc) window is opened.EnvironmentThe important part of using ssh-agent is an

Bryannoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1125874813599953282005-09-04T16:58:00.000-06:002005-09-08T21:18:06.483-06:00

OverviewThis covers the steps necessary to export filesystems on Mac OS X via NFS. This was originally written in the 10.1 days, but is still applicable as of 10.4.2 (non-server versions).Like setting up a client, configuring OS X to be a server involves updating NetInfo. For a server, there are several Unix daemons which need to run (one of which needs to be notified if it is already running).

Bryannoreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15949407.post-1125469289995363702005-08-31T00:14:00.000-06:002005-09-11T17:56:03.656-06:00

OverviewI'll discuss the changes necessary to mount NFS filesystems onto a Mac OS X machine. This was originally written in the 10.1 days, but is still applicable on 10.4.2 (non-server versions tested).The example filesystem used here will be called /exported/path from the server nfsserver. It will be mounted to /private/mnt. You will obviously want to change these to something useful and sane

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