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

    qlmanage

    QuickLook scans file contents before you open those files. Usually this just lets you view a file quickly. But you can also use this same technology from the command line to bring about a change to the Finder without actually opening a file. To access QuickLook from the command line, use qlmanage. qlmanage -p ~/Desktop/MyTowel42.pdf While open, click the space bar to go back to your Terminal session. The most notable use case here is that when you use qlmanage you don’t run the risk of changing the date/time stamp of the files.

  • Mac OS X Server

    Migrating the Wiki Service in Mac OS X Server

    Lion brings with it a few challenges for administrators. One such is migrating the wiki service into the new format. When doing an upgrade in place, the Wiki service is pretty straight forward to upgrade, but in many cases, due to aging hardware, wiki services are moving from an older computer to a newer computer. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is to “migrate” the data by copying the Collaboration folder onto the new system. The second is to “export” and “import” the data. I usually recommend doing a migrate where possible, so we’ll start with that method. Note: Before getting started, make sure that…

  • Mac OS X

    Selecting Text in QuickLook

    You’re searching for some content on your desktop and opening pages file after pages file and pdf after pdf in QuickLook. Finally you find that one juicy morsel. It’s a short script you just need to copy into your clipboard. But you can’t. The gods of technology are aligned against you, to make you hit command-O and then after waiting for the entire 3 seconds it takes Preview to open, you have to search within the document for that information. Holy crap, you just lost at least 5 to 8 seconds of your day. I guess now you have to cancel vacation or let your spouse know you’ll be home…

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

    Suspicious About Package Contents?

    It’s fairly easy to take an application installer in Mac OS X and repackage it. In the process it’s also straight-forward to include other, potentially unintended information in the package. This is why a number of vendors will sign their packages and then post the signatures for systems administrators to be able to verify the signatures. In Mac OS X you can also view the contents of a package by control-clicking on it and choosing Show Contents in order to be able to manually review the contents. But could it be even easier? Apparently so: Mothers Ruin Software has written a QuickLook plug-in for Packages, called aptly enough, Suspicious Package.…

  • Mac OS X

    QuickLook

    If you click on a file, folder or image in Mac OS X and then press the space bar to see a QuickLook screen.  Here, you can click on the diagonal arrows pointing outwards to move into full screen – great for showing documents or images during presentations.  While in full screen mode, click on the diagonal arrows again to go back to a windowed appearance. If it is an image then you can will also have an icon to save the image into iPhoto and can option-click on the image to zoom in.