28Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 6 Comments

Immediate delete for USB drives under OSX

CLI, Macintosh, OSX
Okay so how many times have you "deleted" a file on a USB drive under OSX only to find out later that the storage is still tied up in .Trashes directory. Well there is a easy way to fix this. Open terminal, cd to your USB drives root directory (mounted under /Volumes) and issue the following:rm -rf .Trashestouch .TrashesThis creates a file called .Trashes on your USB drive (don't worry the file size is zero). The side effect of this is that if you delete files off the USB stick, OSX will delete them immediately (since it can not create a .Trashes directory).
Read More
28Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 2 Comments

Install OSX on a external disk without rebooting

Macintosh, OSX
Normally if you wanted to install OSX on a external drive, you'd probably reboot, insert the DVD and boot off the DVD. Well turns out you really don't have to do that. You can actually attach a external drive to your machine while it's running OSX, insert the DVD and install OSX to the attached external device. Here is how:Assuming your machine is running some sort of OSX, insert the OSX install DVD into the drive.Now attach the external device to your machine (ie: firewire drive).Now using finder navigate to "/System/Installation/Packages/" Folder and run "OS Install.pkg" (it might be "OS Install.mpkg") by double clicking it.Go through the installation process and choose the external drive as your installation destination.DONE....
Read More
28Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 4 Comments

Couple of quick shell tips

CLI, Shell Script
Okay these are bash goodies, so they'll work in any environment. If you're in a situation where you're switching between two different directory paths over and over again, here is a quick tipcd - Another little annoyance that I've gotten around is when you want to edit a system file and you type in the command (ie: vi /etc/this/is/a/really/long/path/config.cfg), only to realize that you forgot to sudo. This used to mean that I would quit vi, curse, recall the command, insert a sudo infront of the vi command and try again....well here is the quicker way.sudo !!This will (re)sudo your last command. And if that's not enough you can actually narrow the sudo down to the last command that started with a certain string.sudo !apacheWhich will look in the history…
Read More
27Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 2 Comments

Quickway to check your DNS settings under OSX

CLI, Macintosh, OSX
This is another CLI command, so get your terminal ready. This gives you a quickway to check the DNS settings on OSX. Now one way is to just cat /etc/resolv.conf , but what if you wanted to see what the system is actually using (not just what it was configured for). Well scutil comes to rescue and gives us an interface to the "dynamic store" data maintained by configd. Here is the command:scutil --dnsThe output will list all four resolver your system is configured for. scutil is another one of those deep OSX commands, so I suggest you have a look at the manual for it (man scutil) or get on google and search for more details (Tech Zendo has a detailed article on how to perform actions during fast…
Read More
27Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou No Comments

OSX Directory Services from Command-line

CLI, Macintosh, OSX
New day, new command. dscl is the command in question. It gives you access to Mac OSX's Directory Services Command Line interface. Very powerful stuff for those of us who like the command line and hate to do the same task a million times. A useful example is the ability to grant Administrator privileges to a user from command line. Normally you would have to pull up System Preferences/Accounts/Click User and check the "Allow user to administrate this computer" box. Well not anymore....Here is how:First you probably want to check who is an admin on the machine in question:dscl . read /Groups/admin GroupMembershipNext you might want to add a user (we call him uberuser here) to the admin list:dscl . append /Groups/admin GroupMembership uberuserAnd maybe you want to revoke the…
Read More
25Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 1 Comment

Samsung: First LCD display to use DisplayPort Interface

DCinema, DisplayPort
So we've been waiting for this for a while now. In Digital Cinema applications display technology throughput has always been a problem. Pumping ~10Gb/s of data to a screen is an issue, be it a projector and/or monitor. There have been a number of "hacks" to get these types of setups working (Dual or Quad DVI/HDMI ports). The problem usually is the seam. It is very hard to sync four DVI output chips properly and even harder to display the pixel information back on the screen (inside the projector/monitor).DisplayPort technology is one attempt to solve this problem:The DisplayPort connector supports 1 to 4 data pairs in a Main Link that also carries audio and clock signals, each with a transfer rate of 1.62 or 2.7 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). The…
Read More
24Jul 2007 by Many Ayromlou 4 Comments

Format Wars…

Uncategorized
There is a great article over on Cnet.uk talking about Format Wars. So you want to know what would have happened if BeOS didn't cost $400 million....Well maybe "it would make BeOS the operating system of choice for Apple Macs. It would also prevent Steve Jobs from returning to that company. In turn, this would put an end to all that silly iPod business and make MiniDisc the dominant force in portable music."Gotta love what if's :-)
Read More