 If you installed the latest version of Drobo Dashboard (currently v1.6.1) on Snow Leopard, and you're also unfortunate enough to have a Intel Mac that doesn't support 64-bit, then you might notice a drop in performance of your Drobo, and possibly your system altogether.
Check your Console logs. If you see something like this...
com.apple.launchd[1] (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d[325]) posix_spawn("...."): Bad CPU type in executable
com.apple.launchd[1] (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d[325]) Exited with exit code: 1
com.apple.launchd[1] (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d) Throttling respawn...
...then the Drobo installation software installed the 64-bit binaries and kexts, even though your machine doesn't support them. Here's how I fixed it.
[2,005 views]  
Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard come with a paltry set of solid colors for desktop backgrounds. This is easily remedied with the ImageMagick package (available for install through both MacPorts and Fink), and a quick Terminal command.
The script below generates all the background images for web-safe colors that should then be immediately available for use in the Solid Colors section of the Desktop tab of the Desktop and Screen Saver System Preferences panel.
cd /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Solid\ Colors; for r in 00 33 66 99 cc ff; do for g in 00 33 66 99 cc ff; do for b in 00 33 66 99 cc ff; do echo Creating image for color $r$g$b; convert -background "#$r$g$b" -page 256x256 text:- "Background $r$g$b.jpg" < /dev/null; done; done; done
You can copy and paste the script into Terminal, but you’ll need to be a system administrator for it to succeed, because it writes the images into /Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors.
[ robg adds: I tested this on a 10.5 machine, and it works as described. If you just have a few solid colors you want to use, you can create them yourself, as we covered in this hint. In addition, if you'd like to make it possible to use any color as your desktop background, you can create a 128x128 transparent PNG, and then use a color picker to set the color of the desktop to anything you like -- see this hint for more details.]
[2,072 views]
I use Boot Camp on my Mac, and quite often I create files in Windows and want those files on the OS X side as well. It's a pain to take out a USB flash drive and copy the files there, reboot, and copy them again. If the files are large, emailing the files to yourself may not work either.
One solution is Dropbox. As Dropbox works on OS X, Windows, and Linux, all you have to do is install Dropbox on your Boot Camp Windows installation, then drop or save any files in theree; they will automatically transfer into OS X the next time you boot back into the Mac OS.
[2,249 views]
All the cool kids are using fish ( bash is so 90's!), so why can't I? Because it won't install on my copy of Snow Leopard, dang it. I spent the greater part of this weekend trying to figure out why fish didn't like me. Read this so you won't have to endure my pain.
Using MacPorts, typing port install fish wouldn't result in a working installation. The install kept asking for iconv, gettext, or whatnot. 64-bit/32-bit Unix apps don't play well together in Snow Leopard, and because I upgraded from Leopard, I needed to reinstall MacPorts to deal with it. Long and painful, indeed.
[2,179 views]
Swap Command and Alt/Option keys in Terminal.app
Thu, Nov 12 2009 at 7:30AM PST • Contributed by: Anonymous
The free program cmd-key-happy allows you to swap the Command and Alt/Option keys in any application, but in particular, in Terminal.app.
This can be extremely handy when ssh'ing into other UN*X boxes and running emacs -nw. It also allows you to have the traditional readline navigation work properly when using Bash (i.e., alt-backspace, alt-f, alt-b, etc). See this blog post for more details.
[ robg adds: Installation help is available in the INSTALL file in the github repository. I haven't tested this one.]
[1,212 views]
In the past, people have submitted hints on how to get their Macs to start internet sharing automatically at boot. All of them are either editing files in hidden directories or creating a StartupItem to do the task. Most people may not want to edit files that are for the system, and Leopard and later versions of OS X use LaunchDaemons, not StartupItems to run scripts or executables at boot.
I created a LaunchDaemon plist based on the composition of the iStat Server's LaunchDaemon plist to run the InternetSharing executable automatically at boot. Here's what it looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Disabled</key>
<false/>
<key>GroupName</key>
<string>wheel</string>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>root</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>InternetSharing</string>
<key>OnDemand</key>
<false/>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/usr/libexec/InternetSharing</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StartOnMount</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</plist>
Save the above as net.tenseg.autointernetsharing.plist; alternatively, you can download the plist file (4KB) from my web site.
To install it, just copy the plist file into /Library/LaunchDaemons. The next time you reboot, the Internet Sharing option should already be turned on (once you're fully logged into a user account). The end result is identical to the older hints, but uses the new LaunchDaemon implementation rather than editing system files or installing a StartupItem.
[1,754 views]
Zoom Firefox windows via scroll wheel
Wed, Nov 11 2009 at 7:30AM PST • Contributed by: Anonymous
Firefox (versions 3.5 and up, at least) has the ability to zoom in and out of a web page, adjusting both text and graphics, without affecting the rest of the screen. You can access this feature via the menus (View » Zoom In or Zoom Out), and via the noted keyboard shortcuts (Command-equals to zoom in; Command-minus to zoom out; Command-0 to reset).
What you may not know is that you can also zoom via your mouse's scroll wheel. Press Control-Command (Control-Option also works) and move the scroll wheel up or down. The browser window will zoom in or out while maintaining, for the most part, the clarity of the text and images. The rest of the screen does not change.
[1,239 views]
10.6: Possible solution for printing to HP Deskjet 990cxi
Wed, Nov 11 2009 at 7:30AM PST • Contributed by: Anonymous
I have a venerable HP Deskjet 990cxi with a double-sided print feed attachment. It has worked brilliantly through all the versions of Mac OS X I've used. However, with Snow Leopard, I'm stuck with using single-sided printing via the free Gutenberg printer driver, as HP has declined to support this model in Snow Leopard.
After some experimentation, I've found that the native HP DeskJet 9800 series driver seems to work fine -- I've got my double-sided printing back. Additionally, the driver also seems to be giving me ink supply levels details, functionality that the original driver never had.
Hope this is of use to anyone else out there struggling to get this printer working in Snow Leopard.
[1,628 views]
This hint explained how to set up a network attached storage (NAS) device as a Time Machine backup. To make this process easier, I've created an AppleScript that makes the creation and setup a one-step process -- just drag and drop your mounted NAS onto the following AppleScript to ready the drive for Time Machine use.
on open names
set volumeName to names as text
set macAddress to (do shell script "ifconfig en0 | grep ether | tr -d '\\011' | sed s/ether// | sed 's/ //g' | sed s/://g")
set hostName to (do shell script "hostname -fs")
tell application "Finder"
set theSize to round (((capacity of startup disk) / 1024 / 1024) / 1024)
end tell
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1" with administrator privileges
do shell script "sudo hdiutil create -size " & theSize & " -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname \"Backup of " & hostName & "\" -fs \"Journaled HFS+\" ~/" & hostName & "_" & macAddress & ".sparsebundle" with administrator privileges
do shell script "mv ~/" & hostName & "_" & macAddress & ".sparsebundle /Volumes/" & volumeName & "/" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to eject volumeName
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
end tell
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "System Preferences"
set frontmost to true
click menu item "Time Machine" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
end open
(You can also download the script (and an application bundle version of it) from this entry on my site.)
After using the script on the drive, open the Time Machine System Preferences panel. Now you should be able to use your network volume as a target disk for Time Machine backups. Read on to find out how to then restore from this disk, assuming you've had a complete hard drive failure and you're starting from scratch with the OS X installation disc...
[3,325 views]
Mark email message as replied-to in Mail
Tue, Nov 10 2009 at 7:30AM PST • Contributed by: germin8
Apple Mail doesn't provide a built-in mechanism for marking emails as replied (or clearing said mark). I solved this weakness with a simple AppleScript that operates on whatever messages are currently selected. Simply create the following script using the Script Editor, and save it to Library » Scripts » Applications » Mail in your home directory, or in /Library » Scripts » Mail Scripts for use by all users.
This script marks the selected messages as replied to:
using terms from application "Mail"
tell application "Mail"
set selectedMessages to selection
repeat with eachMessage in selectedMessages
-- set was replied to of eachMessage to false
set was replied to of eachMessage to true
end repeat
end tell
end using terms from
For marking as unreplied, I used the brain-dead solution of simply creating a second script which is identical with the exception of substituting the value false into the set was replied to line, as demonstrated by the commented line which starts with --. Save the two versions of the script to one of the above folders.
Now you should see whatever name you chose for your scripts available from the AppleScript menu. (Assuming you have the AppleScript menu enabled.)
[ robg adds: Mail should automatically track reply status for messages, and if you're using IMAP, that information should appear on all your Macs. However, I have seen Mail get confused in the past and lose the reply status on certain messages. The above script provides a simple fix for those times.]
[1,697 views]
|
|
User Functions
Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?
What's New:HintsNo new hints
Comments last 2 days
Links last 2 weeksNo recent new links
What's New in the Forums?
The Editor's Corner...Here are some of my ( robg) other projects...
The macosxhints PollWhat version of OS X are you running as your main OS?
Other polls | 11,422 votes | 42 comments
|
