OS X

Wow, you can see the apple logo backlight through the monitor.

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:20:23 -0400

Wow, you can see the apple logo backlight through the monitor.

Wordpress

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:26:01 -0400

I’m gonna move to wordpress. Will just keep my artsy blog here.

So cute.

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:49:38 -0400

So cute.

My macbook air (June 11, 2012 model) is doing much better.

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:44:00 -0400

My macbook air (June 11, 2012 model) is doing much better.

Slightly concerned by this. Not doing as well as it should. Is...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:39:00 -0400

Slightly concerned by this. Not doing as well as it should. Is mountain lion a RAM-sucker?

This is my 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 21.5 in. iMac from summer 2011. I upgraded directly from snow leopard to mountain lion.

risingfalling: I couldn’t resist.

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:54:15 -0400

risingfalling:

I couldn’t resist.

Another complaint… Search engines cannot be added. I guess...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:35:00 -0400

fuuuuuuuu system preferences

ugly duck duck go bar

Another complaint…

Search engines cannot be added.

I guess a lot of people don’t care, because google, soon-to-be-big-brother is so popular, but I am nearly a hardcore duckduckgo fan.

My only solution was to install an ugly bar.

Also glims works. Except I dislike it, since I find it a bit heavy (9.1 mb) for an extension and cluttery.

Mountain Lion Angst

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:29:59 -0400

I think I’m just going to be very, very ragey about mountain lion for a while.

It’s cute and all but I am having such a hard time getting things to work.

I ran sudo port install mcabber scp’ed the mcabberrc from...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:45:37 -0400

With ssl.

Without ssl.

I ran

sudo port install mcabber

scp’ed the mcabberrc from my school

found out that “set jid” no longer works - “set username” is how they do it now.

And then I get this.

If I set ssl = 0, I get the second screenshot.

FUUUUUUU Mountain Lion seriously fucks up MacPorts. I...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 21:24:00 -0400

FUUUUUUU

Mountain Lion seriously fucks up MacPorts.

I haven’t found a solution.

And yes, I did run port selfupdate.

Mountain Lion /dev

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:08:00 -0400

One thing I noticed right off the bat is that there are a lot more devices in Mountain Lion.

ls /dev and what do you see?

A shitton of ptys - pseudo terminals.

Mountain Lion

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:05:48 -0400

Oh, it’s out now.

Time to start posting again.

kill -HUP `pidof finder`

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:43:00 -0400

A friend just told me about this command: kill -HUP `pidof finder`, a deadly command which will probably bork your os x install.

Apparently it causes a kernel panic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic

Don’t do it.

Directory Structure - Library

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:01:33 -0400

The library - what does it sound like? A library. It’s a library of resources. Since there are way too many subdirectories to go through in detail, I’ll only go through the ones which might be relevant to someone in need of some hacking…

Application Support - These are some non-critical resources for apps such as Automator, Grapher, Mail, GarageBand, Microsoft Office, etc.

Desktop Pictures - These are desktop pictures; if you want to add some to the preloaded Apple Desktop Pictures for whatever reason, simply add the desired photos to this directory.

Dictionaries - If you want to add dictionaries to the dictionary.app, such as, for example, an IT dictionary or a foreign language dictionary, you must move your downloaded .dictionary files to this folder.

Fonts - You can add font files here. Note that the directory “Fonts Disabled” contains Times New roman, Verdana, Wingdings, Arial, and Brush Script - all windoze-y fonts. If you want to use them, simply move them to the Fonts directory.

Frameworks - Here are the frameworks for iTunes, AudioMixEngine, AEProfiling, AERegistration, AudioMixEngine, NyxAudioAnalysis, PluginManager, and other programs. They are filled with important files like libraries and supporting programs. More on this later; I don’t understand them entirely.

Java - This contains basically all the important files needed for java to run. /Library/Java/Home/bundle/Commands and /Library/Java/Home/bin are two paths to where all command-line commands for java are located… Who knew there was more to java than just jar, java and javac?

Keychains - Keychains are here. More about keychains here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keychain_(Mac_OS)

Ok, it’s late and I’m sleepy; I’m less than halfway through, but I’ll stop for tonight and continue tomorrow.

Directory Structure - Applications

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:24:35 -0400

The /Applications directory contains .app files. These are apps; programs. They are what appear in your launchpad or applications folder… It’s pretty self-explanatory. .app files are executable. If you try to open one in a text editor, you won’t see anything.

Pretty simple. Pretty self-explanatory.

Yes. Enjoy your Mac. I wish I owned one because then I wouldn't have to muddle with GNUstep when I could be using NeXTSTEP, which is natively on the Mac. Then, I could try developing some iPhone/iPad/iPod applications using Objective-C. And Linux is great and all, but if you ever have problems with a Mac, you can bring it to the Genius Bar and ask questions, which is far easier than tracking down answers in forums and discussion boards.

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:27:10 -0400

True. I love your thoughts-on-computing blog, btw.

Directory Structure

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 22:37:10 -0400

One really important step to understanding and manipulating an OS is knowing the directory structure; where important system files and other files are stored. So, I’ll explain the directory structure of Mac OS X.

You may want to open of Terminal (under Utilities) and follow along.

Type in “cd /”, then “ls”

/ is the root of the directory tree. OS X is based off of FreeBSD, a *NIX operating system, so the directory structure is very similar to that of linux or any other *NIX OS.

I’ll go through each folder in detail in the next couple of posts, but the basic gist of things can be found here: http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/30/mac-os-x-directory-structure-explained/

It would be fun and worthwhile to dissect one some time.

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 22:24:15 -0400

It would be fun and worthwhile to dissect one some time.

Firmware Password Utility

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:36:00 -0400

This is a really useful utility which allows you to protect your computer against other people with knowledge of single user mode and other goodies.

Also, if you don’t want others installing linux on your mac without permission, this protects against that as well.

On Snow Leopard, you’ll need to stick in the install disc which came with your computer and then reboot. Open the Firmware Password utility under Utilities and set a password.

Once a password is set, a password is required to boot from an external drive and single user mode.

In lion, command-R will do the trick. It is especially important to set up a firmware password in lion, since you don’t need access to the installation disk to reinstall the operating system or do anything equally harmful. If a firmware password is set, the following screen will show up when command-R is executed.

Single User Mode

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:07:00 -0400

So, I’ll begin a series of basic hacks; really simple foundations to start with.

First off: Single User Mode.

Well, there are several ways to control a computer which you do not have access to. Assuming you have physical access of a machine, but do not have access to an account on the machine, single user (aka verbose) mode is probably the single most effective way to control it.

I won’t go into much detail about what it is (read the wikipedia article for that), but it is simply a runlevel which allows one to control a computer as the superuser.

On Mac OS X it looks like this:

You can change the root password of the system and fiddle around with lots of important files like sudoers and pam.conf.

How?

Reboot your computer. Hold down command-S (⌘-S). If your computer is not protected by an open firmware password, you should see something like the screen shown in the picture. It’ll ask you to fsck with the command /sbin/fsck -fy and /sbin/mount -uw / to make modifications to the file system.

Well, what do you want to do now that you have control over this computer?

Change the root password: Use the command passwd
Add a user to the sudoers file: visudo -f /etc/sudoers (man visudo for more info)

Well, those are the two most useful commands, but go ahead and play around yourself to discover more.

Limitations of Single User Mode:

Single user mode has several limitations. First of all, it is easily disabled. One can switch it off easily using the firmware password utility.

Dscl, which is used to create new accounts from the command line, cannot be used in single user mode either.