If we were in the directory Desktop and wanted to backup all the files to a tarball called backups.tar, we could issue this command: tar cvf backups.tar . The flags here:c creates an archive, v makes the process run verbose and f sets the file name. The . tells tar to back up the current working directory. Use pwd if you’re unsure what that is. As we didn’t tell tar where to put the file it will automagically put it in the working directory. By default tar is recursive although you can specify an n flag to alter that default behavior. Now, to display the contents of the tar file we just created,…
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hostname
OK, so this one is pretty easy. You can use the hostname command to return back the name of your computer. There’s also a nifty little s flag to remove any domain naming from the return string.
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Kerio
Ever wonder if there’s something else out there other than Exchange? Well, if you are a company with less than 400 accounts and you don’t need some of the more advanced features of Exchange, like site replication then Kerio might just be the app for you: http://www.kerio.com
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Mac OS X: Q
Want to play with Virtual Machines but can’t get ahold of VMware or Parallels? Then check out Q. It’s small, quick and works like a charm: http://www.kju-app.org/
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Video on Protecting Mac Workstations in an Education Environment
http://www.macworldencore.com/online/presentation.asp?id=299&sessionTypeIdVideo=1&trackIdVideo=3&movieVideo=IT853.mp4&yearDate=2008
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Mac OS X Server: Spotlight
When client systems need to search the server quickly you can enable Spotlight on the Share Points. To enable this, open Server Admin -> File Sharing -> Share Points -> Click the Share Point in question -> Click Share Point -> Check the box for Enable Spotlight -> Click Save. Then have a nice long steak dinner.
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Mac OS X: Data Detectors in iChat
If you’ve used Mail.app then you’ve seen the little box around phone numbers and addresses occasionally. If you right-click on it then you’ll see something similar to the following: This is called a Data Detector and is one of the 300 new features that were put into Mac OS X 10.5. The concept of the Data Detector can be extended to include other applications provided they are capable of using them. For example, iChat. iChat does not make use of Data Detectors by default, but you can enable them by running the following command: defaults write com.apple.iChat EnableDataDetectors 1
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Mac OS X: Getting a Finder Window as Root
CD into the /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/macOS directory. Su and then run ./Finder. You’ll see an error, the system will complain, but then, automatically you’ll see a Finder Window with Root. Might crash the Finder after a few minutes though, so be careful…
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Mac OS X: Command-Tab
The other day I was sitting at a computer and I hit Command-Tab to shift between applications. Someone from the Windows side of the fence was peeking over my shoulder and was astonished that Mac OS X had that functionality. So I went on to show what else Command-Tab can do. For example, press Command-Tab and hold the Command key and you’ll keep the Application Picker window open. Then press the Tab key again and it will move to the next application or continue pressing it and it will cycle through all of the open applications until coming back to your current application. Press the Command-Shift-Tab and it will back…
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Mac OS X Server: Software Update Server Setup
The settings are to automatically mirror all Apple updates. These updates are then provided over port 8088. Settings can be seen as follows: In order to disable an update that may be problematic for your environment, you can click on the Updates tab and uncheck the Enable dialog for the specified update. Setting up a Software Update Server if you are using Open Directory is a fairly simple task. Just open Workgroup Manager, connect to an OD server or the appropriate Directory Service and then click on the computer or computer group you would like to edit the software update information for and then click on Preferences. Then click on…