Spotlight doesn’t automatically index network volumes. To configure spotlight to index network volumes, use the mdutil command followed by an arbitrary path, with the -i option and then the on parameter. For example, for a volume called Galvatron, you would enable indexing using the following command: mdutil /Volumes/Galvatron -i on To monitor the status of the indexing process: mdutil /Volumes/Galvatron -s If this happens to cause any problems, use the off parameter instead, along with the same command to disable indexing of that volume. mdutil /Volumes/Galvatron -i off You can send the mdutil commands through Apple Remote Desktop. For example, I’ve needed to toggle indexing on and then off, for…
-
-
RAMdisk on MacBook Air
I can’t remember where I picked up how to get a RAM Disk mounted in OS X, but it’s a great way to get some unbelievable speeds on your Mac for those minor IO intensive processes that don’t need persistent data. It should be mentioned that the contents of RAM disks are erased, once ejected, but the speed of processes while they’re running can be pretty phenomenal on systems with fast RAM. The best example is a MacBook Air, where the memory is surface-mounted QFP and so really fast. Let’s say you have 4GB of memory and you want to run a process that isn’t going to take more than a…
-
Hosting afp on Linux
One of the main reasons people get a server is to share files. Mac OS X Server is one of the more common devices used to share files to Mac OS X clients, using afp, the default file sharing protocol for Mac OS X. But you don’t have to use Mac OS X Server. You can use Linux as well. We’re going to look at using an open source project called netatalk to do so. If you find that after reading this that you’d like to find out more about netatalk then check out the open source project page at http://netatalk.sourceforge.net. The netatalk installer can be installed through most of…
-
AFP and Cleartext Passwords
AFP can be persnickety about you doing something as painfully silly as authenticating into a host using a password sent in cleartext (completely unencrypted). But when you’re troubleshooting it can be useful to disable this behavior, if only to test and then re-enable again. To do so: defaults write com.Apple.AppleShareClient afp_cleartext_allow -bool YES And to disable the warning: defaults write com.Apple.AppleShareClient afp_cleartext_warn -bool NO
-
Create Groups Using dscl
The directory services command line (dscl) command can be used to create a group. Here we’re going to use dscl to create a group called Local Admins (or ldadmins for short). First up, create the group: dscl . create /Groups/ladmins Now give our ladmins group the full name by creating the name key: dscl . create /Groups/ladmins RealName “Local Admins” Now to give the group a password: dscl . create /Groups/ladmins passwd “*” Now let’s give the group a Group ID: dscl . create /Groups/ladmins gid 400 That wasn’t so hard, but our group doesn’t have any users. dscl . create /Groups/ladmins GroupMembership localadmin Why create a group with just…
-
Mac OS X 10.5: The New Terminal
I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Apple has been slowly winning over a lot of traditional Unix and Linux converts. This new breed of switcher is after a cool shell environment. In Leopard, Apple has upgraded Terminal.app to provide a whole slew of new features that are sure to continue winning new converts. Let’s just take a look at a few of them: Secure Keyboard Entry – Prevent other applications from detecting keystrokes used in terminal. Enable this using the Terminal menu. Tabbed Interface – I always have 3 shell windows open. That’s how I roll. But with the new tabbed interface (which you can access using the Command-T keystroke) I find…
-
Mac OS X Leopard: What About that ZFS Thingie?
I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal ZFS was released by a team at Sun in November of 2004. The name stands for “Zettabyte File Systemâ€. ZFS is a 128-bit file system, so it can store 18 billion billion (18.4 × 1018) times more data than current 64-bit systems. We’re not going to sit here and do the math for that but you are more than welcome to figure out what the theoretical size is at that point – all we can say is that it’s friggin’ huge. Traditional file systems reside on single devices and require a volume manager to use more than one device to generate a logical or…