• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Find The Search Base In OS X Server

    Once upon a time, Server Admin was a tool that allowed Admins of OS X Server to look at settings for an OS X Server using a graphical tool. As Server Admin is no longer being used, we frequently find there are certain settings we need to find in the replacement Server app that just aren’t in graphical tools any longer. One of the settings that you need when integrating other systems is the search base. This defines the location that searches start when queries against the directory tree are run. When other systems are integrated into Open Directory they need to use this to be able to enumerate information…

  • Uncategorized

    CIDR Conversion Table

    CIDR Conversion Table CIDR prefix length Dotted Decimal Netmask Hexidecimal Netmask Inverse Netmask Binary Number of Classfull Networks Number of Usable IPs /1 128.0.0.0 80 00 00 00 127.255.255.255 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 128 As 2,147,483,646 /2 192.0.0.0 C0 00 00 00 63.255.255.255 1100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 64 As 1,073,741,822 /3 224.0.0.0 E0 00 00 00 31.255.255.255 1110 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 32 As 536,870,910 /4 240.0.0.0 F0 00 00 00 15.255.255.255 1111 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 16 As 268,435,454 /5 248.0.0.0 F8 00 00 00 7.255.255.255 1111 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 8…

  • Articles and Books,  WordPress

    20 Rules of Capitalization

    Yesterday, I wrote an article on technical writing. Today, I’m laying out a few basic rules with regards to when to capitalize things. This is pretty straight forward but I find it can help to remember the rules to lay them out in a basic way. These things should have their first character capitalized: The first letter of a sentence. This includes a quoted sentence inside a sentence but not a phrase within a sentence. This also includes the first letter of a terminal command when a sentence starts with a command, although I try to restructure those sentences when they come up as it’s not a hard thing to…

  • Articles and Books

    25 Tips For Blossoming Technical Writers

    I write a pretty good amount of content. These days, I edit almost as much as I write. And in doing so, I’ve picked up on some interesting trends in how people write. This has led me to mentioning a few tips and tricks, if I can bore you with the details for a bit: Define the goal. What do you want to say? The text on the back jacket of most of my books was written before I ever wrote an outline. Sometimes I update the text when I’m done with a book because the message can change slightly with technical writing as you realize some things you’d hoped…

  • Running,  Wearable Technology

    Setup Fitbit Aria

    The Fitbit Aria Scale tracks weight, body fat and BMI. It’s also pretty cool how it smiles at you too. As a gadget head, there’s really no way I could go through life without one of these. If you use a One, Ultra or Flex, this data gets synchronized to the same Fitbit account you use for other things as well. The scale can also be used by multiple people in a household, with each persons weight getting synchronized to their own account at Fitbit. The Aria comes with batteries. But don’t put them in before installing the app. To set the device up, first install the Fitbit Wi-Fi Scale…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Exclusively Use a Given Interface for the Caching Service in Mountain Lion Server

    The caching service in Mountain Lion Server (OS X Server 10.8) by default can use any interface installed on the system. I’ve now seen a couple instances where we have a Small Tree card and when a big update comes up, we loose file services speed due to caching data. To combat this, we can tell the Caching service to use the built-in Ethernet interface exclusively instead. To do so, first use ifconfig to determine which interface is which. Then tell the caching service which to use, using the serveradmin command, followed by settings and then the name of the setting, caching:Interface, setting the value to the en of the…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Ubuntu

    Managing Core Dumps

    The core dump is a memory image of a processes in-core state that is written to the /cores directory by default and is named core followed by a . and then the pid number. So if a process with pid 87 crashes a file is written by default at /cores/core.87. The feature can be turned off using sysctl, along with the kern.coredump MIB, setting it to 0 (by default it’s 1). sysctl kern.coredump=0 To turn it back on: sysctl kern.coredump=1 Additionally, you can change the path that the files are written into, using sysctl along with the kern.corefile MIB. The corefile is an expression that by defualt writes core.%P where…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Use Postgres On Mountain Lion Server

    Mountain Lion Server (OS X 10.8 Server) comes with Postgres baked in. Many of the server services are tied into the Postgres installation and in the future more will be as well. The GUI provides no options for Postgres, but there are plenty of settings that can be accessed using the serveradmin command line. Simply run serveradmin followed by settings and then postgres to see what these are, as follows: serveradmin settings postgres Which outputs the following: postgres:log_connections = "on" postgres:unix_socket_directory = "/var/pgsql_socket" postgres:listen_addresses = "" postgres:unix_socket_group = "_postgres" postgres:log_statement = "ddl" postgres:log_line_prefix = "%t " postgres:unix_socket_permissions = "0770" postgres:log_lock_waits = "on" postgres:logging_collector = "on" postgres:log_filename = "PostgreSQL.log" postgres:dataDir =…

  • Mac OS X

    Disable Outgoing Mail Sound In Apple Mail

    There are so many reasons that disabling the outgoing mail sound in OS X might be a good idea for some. To disable the sound, write a key called MailSentSoundPath with the contents of a path to the new sound into the com.apple.mail defaults domain (in this case we’re just not gonna’ send it any real data so it doesn’t play a sound): defaults write com.apple.mail MailSentSoundPath /devnull The close Mail and open it again. Try sending yourself an email and the sound should be gone. To enable the sound again, just delete the MailSentSoundPath key: defaults delete com.apple.mail MailSentSoundPath

  • iPhone

    Change Your Default Search Engine Back on iOS

    Recently, Safari on my iPhone started finding things I searched for using Yahoo! rather than the previously default Google search engine. Now, I’m not gonna’ hate on Yahoo! here. I actually left it for weeks so I could see the differences and nuances here and there. From the different way it displays movie times to image handling, I just didn’t exactly love Yahoo! (although it gets better all the time). So I decided to switch it back. If you decide to switch back, you do so by first opening the Settings App and then scrolling down to and tapping on Safari.   From the list of available options, select Google,…