Note: I had previously written this article for Mac OS X 10.5 but have put in a few updates and so thought it might be time to repost it. Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6 have a multitude of ways to keep data from coming or going from a system. The traditional way is to use ipfw, although this isn’t the default way in 10.5 and above. Instead, you are meant to use the Application Layer Firewall (we’ll call it ALF for short), which is what you configure from the Security System Preference pane. You can enable the firewall simply enough by using the defaults command to…
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Uniq Logs
Recently I’ve been looking at a lot of log files. And sorting through them can be a bit of a pain. However, there are some tools out there to help make this process a bit easier. The first of these is sort. If I have a log that has 1,000 lines, while I like to initially see any lines that are repeated numerous times so that I can see when servers are throwing a lot of errors, combing through them can get tedious. Sort will help to reduce the volume and organize them in a manner that makes sense. For example, to sort the logs and remove duplicate line entries…
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Blessing the blessed
The bless command can be used to read your currently blessed operating system in Mac OS X. You can also leverage it to set an operating system in Mac OS X. Don’t ask why, but I recently needed to read what my blessed operating system was and set my blessed operating system to the same volume. Much like choosing a volume in the Startup Disk System Preference pane when I’m already booted to that volume. With a little help debugging, here’s what I came up, in case anyone : myDisk=”$(/usr/sbin/bless –getBoot)” myDiskOutput=”$(/usr/sbin/diskutil info “$myDisk” | grep “Volume Name” | cut -c 30-60)” bless –mount /Volumes/”$myDiskOutput” –setBoot echo $myDiskUtilOutput > /tmp/booter.txt…
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Disable Quarantine
I recently wrote up an article on some of the new malware safeguards in Snow Leopard. Well, turns out some people want to disable some of it. So you know the prompt that you are downloading an application that then asks you if you want to open it since it’s been quarantined. Well, you can disable it (not that you should but I’ve seen a couple of cases now where I needed to. To do so you’re going to place an LSQuarantine key into the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist. To do so, run: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO To set it back to normal: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool YES
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10 Worst MySpace Apps
One of the contributors to the success that Facebook has had in the social networking world is the ability for savvy developers to build applications. MySpace has been picking up scraps from the Facebook strategy for some time and has followed suit with the ability to integrate custom applications. Now that MySpace has more than 50 pages of applications, I wanted to do a 10 best MySpace applications post. But beyond the RSS feeder I mentioned earlier and a couple of interesting apps that were also on Facebook (and were better in the Facebook iteration) I just couldn’t do it. Therefore, let’s take a look at some of the high…
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Disable Spotlight for Xsan Volumes
I’ve seen a number of Xsan environments spewing tons of errors in regards to Spotlight this and Spotlight that. Yup, that is with Spotlight disabled on the volumes. You can use the mdutil command to help with this. If you have two volumes, then the script to do so would be similar to the following (assuming they are called A and B): mdutil -i off /Volumes/A mdutil -i off /Volumes/B Later if you decide to implement Spotlight, you can use the following to re-enable indexing: mdutil -i on /Volumes/A mdutil -i on /Volumes/B
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SMB, Extended Attributes & Xsan
Xsan 2.2 is having a bit of a problem with serving up files with Extended Attributes over SMB volumes that are stored on an Xsan according to a recent knowledge base article. The fix (other than not using files with Extended Attributes on Xsan volumes that are shared up over SMB is to enable stream support in the /etc/smb.conf file. To do so, open /etc/smb.conf and then change the stream support = yes setting to stream support = no. This isn’t to say that all of your problems will magically vanish, but it should help to provide some relief until the next update.
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MySpace RSS Integration
MySpace won’t die. Good. Competition breeds innovation and if social networks are to continue to become more and more useful then a somewhat healthy MySpace is simply going to keep the cog wheels turning in the otherwise spiderweb filled heads of talented engineers. MySpace introduced applications awhile back and there is now a pretty ample number, although nothing close to what Facebook has. I suppose there’s something to be said for being a day late and a dollar short, eh? Most of the applications, as with Facebook, aren’t that useful. Games to help you waste time and quizzes to help you inform your friends and coworkers that you haven’t stepped…
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The iPad's A4 processor
The iPad is leveraging the new A4 chip from Apple, the first time Apple has released their own chip. Running at 1GhZ, the A4 is an ARM-based chip. The A4 is similar, if not the the ARM Coretex-A9 MPCore processor with graphics brought to you by the ARM Mali 50, capable of 720p hi-def video. These chips are what are referred to as System on a Chip, which stands for SOC. An SOC has a processor, graphics and memory together on the chip. If this sounds similar to an Atom chip, such as Moorestown from Intel then you’re not crazy, it is. This is similar to the Snapdragon chips from…
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Defaults Research
When you are researching various property list settings for applications then you are likely to come across settings that start with kCFPreferences fairly often. When you do then you know that these are preferences for components of an application that are not necessarily unique keys to specific domains. These are constants that have been declared in the CFPreferences.h and apply as indicated here: kCFPreferencesAnyApplication: All Applications kCFPreferencesAnyHost: All Hosts kCFPreferencesAnyUser: All Users kCFPreferencesCurrentApplication: Only the current/defined application kCFPreferencesCurrentHost: Only the current/defined computer kCFPreferencesCurrentUser: Only the current/defined account