Some of this stuff is pretty basic, but because it's stuff that I didn't
know all that long ago and because most of it was not collected in any
really convenient place, here it is:
Always boot verbose:
Enter 'nvram boot-args="-v"' into a terminal as root. The default is to
have no boot-args at all, and you should in theory know if you've added
any others.
Note, if your system is OS 9 bootable and you ever actually do boot into
OS 9 with it, this change will be undone.
Non-destructively "disabling" files:
There are many tewaks in MacOS X which involve removing files installed
by MacOS X. In most cases, you don't actually have to delete these
files, just make MacOS X unable to access them. DropStuff is by far the
easiest method of doing this:
Configure DropStuff to remove the original file after compression
Drag the file to be replaced into DropStuff
Remove the .sit extension
Whatever means you use to compress files and directories can be used the
same way, in nearly all cases. Just remove the compressor's extension.
The file will still be listed in Finder as an archive, but other things
will simply trust the extension, recognize that the file is the wrong
format for the extension, and skip it.
Disabling Internet Explorer
Open your Applications folder and apply the above disabling technique to
the .app itself. Note that if some file lists its creator as Internet
Explorer, it will not automatically open with your chosen browser as the
next best option if Internet Explorer is available under Classic.
That's right, it would sooner open Classic than simply open with Safari
or Camino.
To completely disable Classic:
Drag /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Classic.prefPane/ to DropStuff and
remove the .sit extension from the resulting file.
Delete /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Classic.prefPane/
Note: compressing the package to a .sit file and removing the .sit
extension will disable Classic in a way that can be undone later.
To completely obliterate Classic:
So you want to throw caution to the winds and ensure that Classic never
again shadows your wallpaper? Okay, you asked for it.. The final death
of Classic can be achieved by deleting these:
/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Classic.prefPane/
/System/Library/Classic/
/System/Library/CoreServices/Classic Startup.app
/System/Library/UserTemplate/English.lproj/Desktop/Desktop (Mac OS 9)
Note that the UserTemplate may be in a different spot for you, depending
on the language settings you use. Of course, on a fresh Jaguar system,
there is no OS 9 desktop folder at all.
You can also throw out these, if they exist:
/Mac OS 9 Files
/Applications (Mac OS 9)
/System Folder
/Documents
NOTE: Some of this stuff might possibly be replaced by a future upgrade
to MacOS X. It might also break the upgrade tool. It is possible to
build a tar file containing just the above and restored later if needed
for upgrade purposes, with a little UNIX shell experience. How to do
this is beyond this scope. If you are concerned and don't know how to
back up and restore those files beforehand, then just disable Classic as
described above, rather than deleting it.
Changing a user's shell and enabling root logins
In /Applications/Utilities is the Netinfo Manager. Open it. Click the
lock icon and authenticate to make changes. Editing properties of users
and groups should be easy enough from there.
Another option exists for the Terminally-inclined - and I don't mean
chsh either. No, chsh doesn't work on its own unless you're booting
single-user. Try 'nidump passwd .' and look at the output. That's the
standard format of /etc/passwd. Note immediately that there are passwd
hashes in the output! While you could write this over /etc/passwd,
doing so would be a very bad idea!
Pipe the output to a temporary file with owner-only permissions (set
your umask to 077 first or something equivalent.) This file can be
edited to your heart's content as any passwd file could be. You can put
your changes back into netinfo by piping the edited file into a command
like 'niload -d passwd .'. The -d causes netinfo to update the existing
information (that is to say, it deletes what you've changed before
storing the new changes..)
Rather than feeding back the whole passwd file, you can feed it just one
or two lines; the ones you just changed. Probably a good idea.
While here, look for a Security menu. If you don't have one, look under
Domain for a submenu. The option to enable and disable logins to the
root account can be found here. Note there are some hoops to jump
through if you're enabling it for the first time and haven't set a
password for root yet.
Heavy metal Mac:
Unsanity (http://unsanity.com/) produces a number of great little tools
they call haxies, including Metalifizer. With this tool and Application
Enhancer, the base toolset for all Unsanity haxies, all cocoa apps can
have the metal look of Apple's current generation software. Note that
this only affects cocoa apps, though.
To get the full effect, you need to actually need to change the Aqua
theme, and Apple never really intended anyone to do that. Never fear,
the people at ResExcellence (http://resexcellence.com/) who are best
known for their cool tweaks to classic MacOS have started getting into
MacOS X as only they would. You can find there links to a Brushed theme
(actually about 6 or 8 themes) and a couple of tools which will install
the themes.
ThemeChanger is free, but rough around the edges. It seems to have been
written by a Linux convert, and it kinda shows. Still, it made a backup
of Aqua, installed script to repair Aqua should I need to, and changed
the theme. Duality you're expected to pay for, but it's a nicer program
overall.
"Here I come to save the day!"
Laptop users learn the lesson fast: Mice are hard to see on small
screens. Another Unsanity haxie, Mighty Mouse, can scale the mouse
cursor or let you install your own cursor themes. If you actually want
to save your own cursor themes, though, it'll cost you ten bucks.
MacOS X and filesystems:
MacOS X can read many filesystems. Of those that you might actually put
on a drive and expect to be able to boot your Mac from, you've got these
choices:
HFS
HFS+
UFS
Chances are if you're talking about MacOS X, you don't have any standard
HFS drives anymore since HFS+ has been the preference since before OS X
was released. MacOS X will not install to or boot from standard HFS, so
that's all that need be said about it. HFS+ and UFS each have pros and
cons, as boot partitions:
HFS+
- Case retentive, but not case sensitive
- Supports resource forks, still used by some apps, including some
Apple ships with Jaguar
- Journalling is supported, however not all HFS+ disk utilities can
cope with journalling if you enable it.
- Designed to boot classic MacOS and requires a couple of stub files
to boot MacOS X
UFS
- Case sensitive, but allows two files with the same name and
different case in a directory
- No resource forks, which means the extra toys on the install media
won't install or run
- Journalling will work with any tool designed to work with UFS
- Fits right in if you also use BSD
- Cannot boot classic MacOS at all
The shakedown for using MacOS X native filesystems in Linux is that UFS
is supported, but read only. HFS standard is supported for read/write.
HFS+ is experimental, and rather unstable in the experience of most.
MacOS X supports all manners of FAT, VFAT, and FAT32 natively, along
with the standard PC partition table format. (You care if you share a
firewire drive between a PC and a Mac, regardless of what OS you run on
the PC..) VersionTracker (http://versiontracker.com/) lists an Ext2
driver for MacOS X. Feedback indicated it was generally stable. Note
that this is a kernel extension, so you're not likely to get MacOS X
booting from Ext2.
Safari's debug menu:
Safari Enhancer (hit VersionTracker) is currently listed as being
available for an older version of Safari, but it still works with the
released 1.0 version. People have reported various levels of success
with the cache clearing and bookmark importing, however the big thing of
interest is the Debug menu. The Debug menu allows you to cloak your
browser's ID string, to debug both Safari and web pages Safari visits,
and to open the page you're currently looking at in another browser.
If you write HTML, you will curse the day that Safari Enhancer is not
updated fast enough for the next new version of Safari.
The perfect cocktail:
MacOS X boots kinda slowly. There are a number of ways to tweak it a
little so that it boots a little faster. The simplest, obviously, is to
make sure the maintenance cron jobs run regularly and to speed up the
drive check by turning on journalling. Cocktail provides knobs for a
lot of things, including the ability to run the maintenance jobs right
now, tweaking the finder and the dock, and cleaning up old .DS_Store
files containing directory views from before you made things work the
way you wanted them to work.
--
Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Available in cherry and grape
<Crow-> Manoj: well, i cant understand stuff like "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245
}"
<Manoj> Crow: That is not quite legal ;-)
<Knghtbrd> Manoj - how would one make "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }" legal
anyway? (and what would it do? hehe)
<Manoj> Knghtbrd: You need to finish the s/// expression.
<Knghtbrd> oh, is that all?
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