Macintosh Notes

Notes on the Macintosh

I do most of my work on Macs because I like having a full Unix operating system, I like having well-integrated graphical tools, I like having hardware that's highly integrated with the software, and I like having other people worry about the system administration.

From here you might find the following useful:

• Notes on Setting up a Macintosh

Other places to look for cool Mac stuff:

• Hawk Wings' list of MacOS Plug-ins
• PHP5 for Mac

LaTeX on the Mac

Option #1: teTeX through MacPorts

 sudo port install teTeX

Option #2: TUG's MacTex install

 http://tug.org/mactex/

Other things you may want:

• TeXniscope
• pdfsync

Fixing a corrupt cache

If your mac prints this:

dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache
dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache
dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache

Try this:

 sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

Backing up a Mac

Although there are some nice programs like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! for backing up Macs, here is an easy way to clone /dev/disk0s2 to /dev/disk1s2:

 #!/bin/sh
 asr --source /dev/disk0s2 --target /dev/disk1s2 --erase --noprompt 
 disktool -n disk1s2 backup

Changing the UID of a user

 dscl . -change /Users/bob UniqueID 501 1000
 chown -R 1000 /Users/bob

Create and mount an image on the mac

 hdiutil create -size 1m foo.dmg -fs HFS+ -volname NIST1 -attach -plist
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/NIST1/

Disable a MacOS Service

Briefly, to turn a service off (in this case com.apple.wikid)

1. sudo launchctl (you will get a prompt - launchd%)
2. list (gets a list of all the services)
3. stop com.apple.wikid (stops the wikid service)
4. unload com.apple.wikid (removes the wikid service from launchd)

See Also

• http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/all_about_launchd_items_and_how_to_make_one_yourself
• http://www.hawkwings.net/plugins.htm - Mac mail plugins list.