Ever wonder why those things you put into /System/Library/StartupItems and /Library/StartupItems start automatically? SystemStarter. System starter automatically starts up items stored in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems. As Mac OS X continues to transition much of the previous functionality of other facilities such as the cron daemon into launchd, development has also reduced the reliance on SystemStarter since Mac OS X 10.3. However, many third-party applications do still use StartupItems, Apple development prefers the launchd facility and will continue to rely more heavily on it in 10.6 and beyond.
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Mac OS X: Groups with Leading Underscores
Have you noticed all those groups in Mac OS X with names that start with an underscore (_)? What do they mean? Well, that’s just the naming convention in 10.5 for service accounts. So in most flavors of *nix you would have an lpadmin group but in OS X you now have _lpadmin instead. Nothing sinister or weird, just a naming convention.
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DNS Caching and Apple
In the article at http://www.macworld.com/article/134793/2008/07/apple_dns.html John Welch goes off on Apple for their delay in the whole DNS Poisoning exploit. It’s kindof amusing…
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Mac OS X: Course on Windows Integration
http://www.learningtree.com/courses/947.htm
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Mac OS X: Running Non-Server OSen on VMware
Beware: if you proceed with this you will violate the EULA of Mac OS X. In fact, reading this article may very well violate said EULA. In fact, reading this warning may… Catch my drift? So Mac OS X is not supported in VMware beta 2. Well, like many things that doesn’t mean that you can’t make it work. To get Mac OS X (not Mac OS X Server) to install into a VMware Fusion beta 2 VM use the following command, create an ISO with the name Mac OS X Install DVD that is a duplicate of the installer DVD and mount it: touch “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist”…
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Mac OS X: Change Spaces Behavior in Dock using MCX
Using Open Directory you can push out a key to stop the automatic Spaces switch when a different application in a different Space steals focus. To do so, first open Workgroup Manager and click on the group in question. Then click on Preferences and then the Details tab. Next, click on the + sign and browse to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app. Next click on Dock and click on the pencil. Here drop down the Often disclosure triangle and click on the New Key button. From here, name the key workspaces-auto-swoosh and set the Type to Boolean and the Value to True.
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Mac OS X: Piping Data to TextEdit
So the traditional way to dump a directory listing to text is to use a command such as the following: ls > test.txt But there’s another way, which actually opens the dump into TextEdit, which is to run: ls | open -tf This extends to the output of any terminal command, so you could also do scutil –get HostName | open -tf, etc.
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Mac OS X Deployment: Lists
Here are some pretty good list-serv’s for people doing a lot of Deployment work: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/macenterprise.html http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/system-imaging https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/radmind-users
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Mac OS X: Serial Port Access within Parallels
Are you using Parallels? Need access to a com port through one of those handy little Keyspan’s? Check this out: http://eudyptes.com/SerialClient.php
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Mac OS X Server: Using Open Directory to Control SideBar
Recently I had a scenario where I wanted to disable all of the menu items using an MCX for some NetBoot clients. To do so, I ended up building a custom MCX. To do so, first open Workgroup Manager and click on the group in question. Then click on Preferences and then the Details tab. Next, click on the + sign and browse to /System/Library/CoreServices. Next click on Menu Extras and click on the pencil. Here drop down the Always disclosure triangle and click on the New Key button. From here, name the key with menu item in question (or create multiple keys) and set the Type to Boolean and…