text:
Is the iOS 5 beta no longer usable?
I've been using iOS5 beta 7 for a while.  About 4 hours ago (possibly the end of the 20th, PST, the expiration date for iOS 5 beta 7) the phone locked itself and claims it requires activation.  Whenever I try, it claims the activation server is temporarily unavailable.
Should I sit tight and wait, or is there something else I can do, such as wipe iOS5 and reinstall from a release image?

How about installing iOS 5 GM?

How about making an actual answer, instead of a comment, Dave :).

Welcome to Ask Different! Normally, questions about pre release software are off topic for this site. Since this is likely to be useful to many people and not change quickly, I'm leaving this question open. Please take a look at the FAQs for more info. Thanks.

You'll have to upgrade to the release version, not much else you can do about it.

iTunes insisted my version is up to date, so I tried the factory reset method, after which iTunes admitted it needs to download an update.  I'm 2 hours into the 4 hour download...

Same here, but with my iPad....

iTunes won't automatically update the betas - to iTunes, beta 7 is the final version. You need to manually download it from developer.apple.com, or do a restore and download it that way.

With the download complete, the release version installed fine and my phone is working fine again.

if your iPhone refuses to being updated to iOS 5.0, maybe you should put it in DFU (Device Firmware Update mode). To do that, follow these instructions:

Plug your iPhone to your Mac/PC;
Hold the power button for 2 seconds;
Without releasing the power button, hold the home button for 10 seconds
Release the power button and keep holding the home button until your iPhone appears in iTunes;
Proceed with software restore; you might restore your software backup at the end of the procedure.

It looks like the OP knows how to restore and is asking whether to do that. Your answer is technically correct, but doesn't appear to be answering the question posed.

The only beta still usable is the GM. So try updating to this beta.

GMs aren't betas. That's why they are called Gold Masters.


text:
Downgrading IOS from IOS 5 to 4.2
I have upgraded my iPod to IOS 5 but now I want to go back to IOS 4.2. How can I do this. Is there any feature in iTunes which can be utilized or I need a .iDYSM file.

Questions about iOS are off topic per the Super User FAQ. In response to this though: Downgrading is EXTREMELY difficult from what I know, and often not even possible.

Restoring to 4.2 is not possible unless you had your iPhone jailbroken when 4.2 was the current version and saved Apples signature with this.
But if you only want back to iOS 4 you might still have a chance, because as far as I know 4.3.5 images are still being authenticated by Apple.
So you can try and download the 4.3.5 image (just google for it), and hold alt while clicking restore in iTunes. It will ask you with which file you want to restore.
Select the downloaded file and unless an error pops up (which might be the case if Apple decided not to allow installations of 4.3.5 anymore) you should be running iOS 4.
(Also if you do this, you should do it soon, Apple won't authenticate 4.3.5 images forever.)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
How do I change Software Update server to official one on OS X Lion (or later)?
I recently bought a new macbook pro with Lion, had some problems and had it checked by Apple people. It was returned to me but the software update server seems to have been changed and will not update. How can I change to the official one? I would like to avoid the 2 hour drive.
Thanks!!

It depends on exactly how they changed the update server setting.  If they did the obvious thing, this should delete the setting (so it'll go back to normal):
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

If that doesn't work, it's possible it's configured as a per-user (rather than system-wide) setting, in which case this should do it:
defaults delete com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

On system newer than 10.10
sudo softwareupdate --clear-catalog

Before driving to the Apple technician, you can type the following Terminal command:
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

This will tell the the URL that SoftwareUpdate is checking.

Would you be willing to expand slightly on this? We are looking for good, in-depth answers. Perhaps you could include the steps needed to get to this point?

On OS X 10.8.2, when testing the above answer, I get this error: The domain/default pair of (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate, CatalogURL) does not exist

@gosmond: that means that your computer will use the default -- Apple's servers.

@GordonDavisson, OK, then machead should make that clear in the answer, so that people who try the command aren't left scratching their heads by an apparent "error" in the output.

FYI, The domain/default pair of (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate, CatalogURL) does not exist is the error i get when i type the complete defaults string. it would be good to tweak this so it actually works.

The above is almost, but not quite correct. It should be
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist

Followed by a reboot.
this will delete whatever server your Mac is looking at to get software updates and will let it default back to the Apple one. I've just done this on an iMac running El Cap which was trying to get updates from an in-house update server that was disconnected years ago.

There is no "above" on Stack Exchange; answers are presented in a random order, though organised by score, & may move over time.

sudo defaults rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist

then reboot

what is defaults doing there? it should be sudo rm

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text:
Can't switch theme in MacVim
I recently installed MacVim along with Janus. When I'm inside macVim I can change my color scheme with :color freya but if i restart MacVim the them is reverted back to ir_black. I've added freya to my .vimrc.local, but it doesn't help.
Also added the following: set term=xterm-256color
I'm using Lion and I've got a bunch of themes in ~/.vim/colors

Are you sourcing your .vimrc.local by hand? That is not a standard file. MacVIM will read your ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc. I'd suggest you keep your syntax settings in .gvimrc for MacVIM unless you want to use them in your terminal as well.
If you want to keep a generic .gvimrc that is shared by multiple systems and set your color only for this machine in .gvimrc.local you can put the following at the end of your ~/.gvimrc
" Allow for local machine-specific modifications
if filereadable($HOME . "/.gvimrc.local")
  source ~/.gvimrc.local
endif

Sigh. The *.local is due to Janus. The typical Janus installation takes over a user’s .vimrc, .gvimrc, .vim/, and then expects users to put their customizations in *.local variant files. Ick.

GUI-based instances of Vim source .vimrc and then .gvimrc, so anything in the latter can potentially override anything in the former.
The Janus .vimrc does a color desert and
its .gvimrc does a color ir_black.
Since .vimrc.local is sourced by Janus’s .vimrc as a final step, its settings can be (in this case, are being) overridden by Janus’s .gvimrc.
To override the color ir_black from Janus’s .gvimrc, you need to put your color freya in your .gvimrc.local (which Janus’s .gvimrc sources as a final step—if it exists and is readable).

I also had this problem - thanks for the clear explanation.

MacVim is a graphical version of Vim, so it can have a graphical config file (.gvimrc) as well as the regular .vimrc.
Have you tried putting your color setting in .gvimrc, or seen whether it has a conflicting setting?


text:
Getting the longitude and latitude from Google Maps
I got a friend who sent me his location via WhatsApp. I am also having the navigation software sygic installed, and it accepts the longitude and latitude to specifiy the location.
For it can I pull the longitude and latitude from google maps and sent them in Sygic?

Yes, you can get your coordinates via Maps app. To do that:

Tap on your current location or drop a pin to a location of your
choosing and then tap.
Tap on the arrow within the blue circle
Tap on share location, choose email
Send it to yourself.
On the email, there should be a link and a vcard. Both of them include coordinate information. However to get the actual coordinates you'll need to copy the link in the email and paste it into, e.g. Notes, to then select just the coordinates.

And you can input the coordinates into the Sygic app.

Copy and paste the following code into your browser address bar:
javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

While the question doesn't make it as obvious as it could, the question is about the Google Maps app on iOS, not about the Google Maps website. Consequently, there is no browser address bar, and bookmark lets aren't an option. But this is a good answer to a different problem.

See my solution instead

Go a random webpage using Safari (e.g. http://google.com).
Go the address bar, and type javascript:navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(p){var c=p.coords;document.write(c.latitude+','+c.longitude);}); (if you see any popups, select OK).
Because Safari is not user-friendly, it doesn't allow you to type certain characters in the address bar. To be able to type javascript:navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(p){var c=p.coords;document.write(c.latitude+','+c.longitude);}); in the address bar, you have to:

Open your Messaging app, go to "Write a Message", type javascript:navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(p){var c=p.coords;document.write(c.latitude+','+c.longitude);});
Double tap >> Select All >> Copy
Now go back to Safari app and paste what you have copied into the address bar.


text:
How can I restore my iPad from iOS 5 to iOS 4?
I updated my iPad from iOS 4 to iOS 5 yesterday, without making any backup. However, I  found that it is not convenient for me to debug my programs. So I want to restore it to iOS 4 again.
I did as follows:

Downloaded iOS 4.3.3
Downloaded iTunes 10.4 to replace 10.5
Connected iPad with my PC
First, I click the on/off button for seconds and then keep clicking the on/off button and home button for about 10 seconds. At last, I keep clicking the home button only for about 15 seconds. iTunes detected my iPad in restore mode.
Following the tips of iTunes, I clicked "Option" and "Restore" button to choose the Firmware I downloaded and tried to restore my iPad.

However, something is wrong here. The error is:

this device isn't eligible for the requested build

Can anyone give me an idea?

iTunes will not willingly load a lower iOS onto a device. Have you looked into the tiny umbrella program to see alternate methods to trick iTunes into doing what you wish.
iOS 4 requires an shsh key to sign the 4.3.3 package for your specific device. This key normally comes from the itunes actication servers. Unless you have already saved that key, the automation tools won't work and you'll have to do muh deeper hacking to crack this nut.

tl;dr

read up on jail breaking
it might be too late for you to go back easily

If you see this isn't eligible for the requested build this means  that Apple has stopped signing the 4.3.3 update. Sorry.


text:
How do I give mysqld write access to a directory?
I am running OSX right now and trying to run a mysqld process and seeing the following error:
 $ /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld --user=root
111026 11:05:08 [Warning] Can't create test file /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/XXX.lower-test
111026 11:05:08 [Warning] Can't create test file /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/XXX.lower-test
111026 11:05:08 [Warning] One can only use the --user switch if running as root

111026 11:05:08 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld: Can't find file: './mysql/plugin.frm' (errno: 13)
111026 11:05:08 [ERROR] Can't open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it.
111026 11:05:08 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
111026 11:05:08 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
111026 11:05:08 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
111026 11:05:08 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
111026 11:05:08 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
111026 11:05:08  InnoDB: Operating system error number 13 in a file operation.
InnoDB: The error means mysqld does not have the access rights to
InnoDB: the directory.
InnoDB: File name ./ibdata1
InnoDB: File operation call: 'open'.
InnoDB: Cannot continue operation.

I understand the problem is since I am not using sudo, my current user account does not have write access to
/usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/
I am trying accomplish two different things

Give the mysqld process write access to that directory without using chmod 700 or whatever. I am trying to use chown and it is not working
Create a script so the mysqld process starts at boot-up

Can anyone help me?

Depending on the uid mysqld is using, chmod 700 on the data directory might not help. You may do the following:

chmod 777 /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/
Startup mysqld again
ls -l /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/ to identify the owner of the created files
chown OWNER /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data
chmod 700 /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data/

Also do change ownership group as well & do it recursively
chgrp -R mysql data_folder

@SenthilKumarVaithiyanathan If the parent dir permissions are set to 0700, group permissions/ownership doesn't matter


text:
Where is the purchase history on iPhone apps?
How do I find out if I've already purchased an iPhone app?
I don't have a credit card so I'm worried about how I can pay to download apps if they're really not free. Even if I have chosen NONE in the billing method, they will still allow me to download paid apps even if I didn't select a payment method.
I created an iTunes account to download free apps through my iPhone. When I was making the account, there was an option on how to pay the bills:

choose a credit card
other means, or
simply choose the "NONE"

I chose "None" because I thought that it would still prompt for credit card information if you were to purchase an app that needed payment. I only wanted to download free apps and that's also why I chose "none".
After a few days of downloading free apps, I clicked on updates and noticed one of them saying that since I already purchased it first, the update was at a discount.
I cancelled the update since I have no credit card.
Days later I noticed the same app in the store, but free. Trying to install it, it would not download and said there was an update pending on my previous version. I waited for a screen to appear about payment information, but none came.
I wanted to cancel paying for this update but haven't seen the option to do so.
I don't know if my wanton clicking means that I've paid for this app without realising it. I have my billing address on there, so maybe there will be a bill coming along.

I do realize how old this question is, but app updates are not and have never been paid. It may have been talking about a discount on an in-app purchase, but developers have absolutely no way to make updates into paid updates. (This is a long-standing beef that some developers have with the way the App Store is set up.)

You can see your purchase/download history in the App Store application on your device. It is in the Updates tab. This feature was introduced in iOS 4.3.3.

On iOS 14.6, you can access the App Store then click on your profile image at the top right of the screen. From there, click on Purchased, then My Purchases.

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text:
Disable mounting Internal Macintosh HD at boot
My iMac (mid-2010 model, Snow Leopard) has a problem with S.M.A.R.T status: Failing and it has become read-only. Because I didn't want to waste money on the repair, I bought an external HD, so the internal HD is now unnecessary. How can I disable mounting the internal Macintosh HD at boot?

Your iMac is almost certainly still under warranty, so getting it fixed will only cost you a trip to the nearest Apple Store.

I'd also like to know the answer to this. I have an out-of-warranty iMac (2007) whose internal drive died. Instead of replacing it, I am now booting from an external (FW800) SSD. However, the iMac's internal drive goes into clicky-click mode from time to time, even though I deleted all volumes from it and ejected it in Disk Utility. I'd really like a way to make it completely invisible to the OS, just as if I had physically disconnected it. Maybe there's a way to fiddle in the EFI configuration? Starting a bounty for this question!

This is quite old, but still works perfectly under Lion, I'm using it for several partitions: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060930150059172
Fast path:

find the Macintosh HD volume UUID: while your Macintosh HD partition is mounted, open Terminal.app and type diskutil info /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD, then read the line beginning with Volume UUID
edit /etc/fstab as root (I personally use vi but any editor will do, the article even mentions pico! If you have TextWrangler installed - you should - with the command line helpers, sudo edit /etc/fstab will work too)
add a line like this one: UUID=F0E430C1-5558-3BB3-9FA9-6904B663FEEA  none  hfs  rw,no auto of course replacing the uuid with yours.

It seems like this would prevent auto-mounting a volume at boot, but not hide the physical hard drive from the OS. In my case, I have erased all volumes from the defective internal hard drive and want the drive to stay off forever, just as if it had been physically disconnected. As I type this, I hear the iMac's internal drive click like there's an army of hamsters running on its platters. I want to make this stop, and it seems like unmounting and deleting all volumes is not enough...

The OP title is clearly about preventing a partition to mount. You are trying to do something totally different here: disable a sata device from being seen, which only can be done in software at the driver/ioreg level. I'm not sure you can do that in a way that would be easier than open the machine and unplug the cable.

blush You are right... It looks like I hijacked a question that is not exactly what I need. The OP and I are in the same situation: having a failed internal drive, booting from an external drive, and wanting to get rid of the internal drive. However, his question is indeed specifically about how to disable auto-mounting the drive at boot. That'll teach me to read carefully.

Is there any alternative to running diskutil to find the UUID? It fails with an error about dependencies missing and says not to use it in single user mode. My machine is not bootable, even from an external hard drive, because the internal one causes the entire system to beachball almost continuously.

I'm not sure if it works with external drives, but the "normal" way to change your start drive is this:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-change-mac-snow-leopards-startup-disk-prefe.html

It does work on external drives (USB or Firewire or no doubt Thunderbolt) but I don't think that's what the question was about. I think the question was, even after starting up from an external drive, how does he prevent his now useless internal drive from mounting/showing. I have no clue how to do that. However, I'd go for comment #1 which is to take the iMac to an Apple store or call Apple and have the drive replaced under warranty.

I know this isn't what you've asked, but why don't you transplant the working external drive (which is no doubt SATA) and replace the faulty internal drive. It should work directly, basically plug and play, ermmm boot.

I was going to suggest the same thing. The easiest way to disable the drive entirely would be to open up the iMac and unplug the dead drive, but at that point you may as well take the external drive out of its casing and install it in the iMac.

Unplugging the internal hard drive is not "easy", that's a 30 minute process requiring suction cups and torx screwdrivers and voiding your warranty.

I never claimed it was easy. Perhaps some, maybe even you, might struggle with this procedure, but it would appear that the OP knows what he's doing. His knowledge of  S.M.A.R.T is a clue that he's likely able to perform such a replacement. I answered in consideration of the OP's ability, not yours. As such, your down vote is quite unwarranted.

I'd also recommend you try to use my util to auto disable your second drive on booting OS with an opportunity to enable it in one command whenever after. Please check it out: https://github.com/igorleanch/2ndrive


text:
How do you md5 an entire disk in OS X?
I want to validate a "dd" image of a USB disk in OS X using the terminal. The terminal command md5 works on the dd image but not on the entire disk.
$ dd if=/dev/disk2 of=image.dd conv=notrunc
1974152+0 records in
1974152+0 records out
1010765824 bytes transferred in 149.033958 secs (6782118 bytes/sec)
$ md5 image.dd
MD5 (image.dd) = 3efc7e341b1bf2d729ffcd9b6a313428
$ md5 /dev/disk2
MD5 (/dev/disk2) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
$ md5 /dev/rdisk2
MD5 (/dev/rdisk2) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

I tried using /dev/rdisk1 and got the same results. I am OS X Lion.

If you are not trying to checksum disk the running system resides on (this won't ever be consistent) you may try

dd if=/dev/disk2 | md5 -

Interesting! Piping directly into md5 rather than generating the file first is a viable solution. I was really hoping that the md5 command would do the disk reading independent of dd.

The philosophy of Unix ensures that the functionality of dd will never be integrated into md5: Unix is intentionally made up of simple components. They each do one thing well and they work together! The beauty of this approach is that you don't need the authors of the md5 command to have foreseen that you might want to use it to generate a hash from an entire disk. In Windows, where tools tend to be less modular and less interoperable, you can't be as clever; unforeseen tasks may require manual steps or purpose-built tools.

By the way, I suspect that dd if=/dev/rdisk2 would be dramatically faster than dd if=/dev/disk2.

The best way is completely unmount (not eject) disk which you can do with Disk Utility or in terminal. Then do dd to stdout and md5 result.

You could mount both filesystems (read-only, if possible) and then recursively checksum each file.
EDIT:
example command:
cd /Volumes/xyz
find . -type f -exec md5 {} \; | cut -c15- > log1.txt
15 in this case is the string length of /Volumes/xyz or what ever your mount point is.
Do this on both file systems and make sure the filenames do not have the starting root path (by using cut).  Then use the 'diff' command to compare the 2 files.

Can you explain how to recursively checksum the files?

Added example commands

Hmm...Is the dd image functional?
What you are seeing might be a result of the dd command possibly putting some junk at the tail end of the transfer so that you get a copy of an even number of records.
You do not say, but it is assummed that you are dd'ing/md5'ing a quiet/unmounted/unused disk to make the image file.

Yes it is functional. If I dd the image back to a different thumb drive I get the expected contents. I also checked this process using Ubuntu and md5sum. It works as expected there.

The size of the disk might not be an even number of blocks.  Thus dd would add junk to buffer the last write to be an integral number of blocks.  Once copied, there are an integral number of blocks so copying the image around will then return the same results.

I think the md5 command doesn't work on entire disks (anymore). I've found old articles saying it should. If you md5 a disk it returns immediately. Can someone verify this?

I know this question is old, but I thought for other people that may read this they would find this helpful... I found that OS X is mounting and writing to the volume immediately upon dd completing. This makes it impossible to checksum the newly written volume and compare with the file. I had to use a forensics tool call DiskArbitrator to prevent volumes from being mounted after dd completes. This allows there to be time to checksum the volume before spotlight messes it up.

Are you referencing El Capitan and earlier or Sierra?  If it's not Sierra, then the correct name is OS X


text:
iPod touch calendar - all of my events AM and PM are switched
So I recently got an iPod touch and synced it with my computer. I set it up to sync with iCal. Unfortunately, on my iPod, all of my events are switched from AM to PM and vice versa. Or at least they are moved 12 hours forward/backward.
Does anybody have any idea how to fix it? I'm trying to avoid wiping it clean, but if that's the only option, I will, because I really want to have iCal on my device.

Check you are working from the same timezone, and that your timezone support setting is configured or not.  Adding as a comment as it's just a hunch, not a definitive answer, but I'll happily make is an answer if it works :)

Yeah I checked that, and they were both in the same timezone. I actually fixed the problem just by updating to iOS 5. Thanks for your comment tho.


text:
Mail can't delete old email address
I recently picked up a used Macbook Pro with Lion installed.
There are no other accounts in the native Mail app except my new Gmail one.
However, when I send an email, the "Reply-to" address that the recipient sees is the email address of the previous owner.
I cannot find a way to remove this email address, it is not in the settings of my sole Gmail account.  It seems to be registered somewhere in the account info of the Mac.

Did you create a new account for yourself or are you using the account the previous owner used already?

I created a new account.

I bet patrix meant creating new user account on system (it's in System Preferences) i.e. not new mail account in Mail.

Check the "me" card.  Open Address Book, go to the "Card" menu, and select "Go to my card".  Edit if required.  Restart Mail, and send yourself a test email.  Check the from address.
Also, I know you've already checked this, but please check again. In Mail.app, go to Preferences, Accounts, and make sure that the email address is set correctly.

Unfortunately that did not work : (


text:
Using two 30" LCD screens with a MacBook Pro
How can I use two 30" LCD screens with my 2011 MacBook Pro?

The problem with the USB2VGA is that you won't be able to drive the full resolution of a 30 in, which is 2560x1600.
Technically, the 2011 MB Pro is capable to drive the 2 monitors, but since there is only one thunderbolt connector you can only connect one Mini Display Monitor. You can however connect two Apple Thunderbolt displays, since they connect to the MB Pro using Thunderbolt and not Display Port. Then you would have the use of the full resolution of both displays.
Sorry, but a 30 in monitor is the biggest one that can be connected to any computer, adding one is asking a lot from a connectors-limited portable...
Good luck!

Correct. Without daisy chaining Thunderbolt displays, and foregoing USB-related video output (not great), you're stuck at one.

Connect your first LCD with the miniDisplayPort to VGA/DVI converter.  And connect your second LCD with a USB2VGA cable.

Incorrect. You will either need the ($100) active display-port -> Dual-Link DVI converter, or a monitor with a built-in display-Port, and a Mini-display-port to display-port cable. The standard mini-display-port to DVI dongle only supports 1920*1200, and all 30" monitors are much higher resolution.

@FakeName Also incorrect. The newer adapters are digital, and can convert backwards with a passive converter. You would need an active converter only if you were going from a DVI-enabled laptop to a Mini DisplayPort display. kukoo had it right.

@David Metcalfe - You are still incorrect. The critical thing here is that a 30" monitor needs dual-link DVI. See the apple support documents here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3571 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3382. You HAVE to buy the $100 adapter to get a dual-link DVI output from a laptop with only a mini-display-port output.

@David Metcalfe - The passive mini-display-port to DVI adapter only supports single-link DVI. From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3382 - Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter - Displays that do not support Dual-link DVI resolutions (DVI displays with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 or lower).

I know what I'm talking about here. I recently went through the affair of trying to get my MacBook Pro to work with my 30" HP ZR30w at native resolution. The solution wound up being tracking own a mini-display-port to display-port cable, which was a pain in the ass.

@David Metcalfe - As an aside, DVI and DisplayPort are both purely digital interfaces, so the comment The newer adapters are digital is nonsensical, unless you are confusing DisplayPort with VGA.

As an aside, Apple stopped manufacturing laptops with DVI outputs in 2008. DisplayPort is NOT DVI. The displayport interface hardware can emulate a single-link DVI interface, to enable passive DP-DVI adapters to work, but displayport is a different protocol from DVI.


text:
Operations: how to filter text messages on iPhone
Question for operations people. I work at a place that believes in configuring Nagios to send SMS alerts on all priorities of issues - even non-urgent ones that I don't need to wake me up in the middle of the night.
Is there a way on my iPhone to filter these texts based on words in the body or subject? I've got an iPhone 3GS, I think it's running iOS 4.x something but I can upgrade to iOS 5 if needed.

I'm not aware of any solution for this

You could send the SMSes through an online service like Google Voice that might be able to do content filtering (or at least would forward certain ones to email to filter).

Unless disabled, the iOS Spotlight search and the in-app Messages search can find terms you might otherwise filter. Automating this in any way is strictly reliant on jailbreaking  the unit for a 3rd-party offering (of which I'm not aware).

well that sucks
darn it all ---

You can use GroupMe as a proxy Text service and set notifications to mute for that contact. That way you can take a look at the conversation if you want to, but don't get disturbed by it.

There's no way to do this in iOS unless you can have the messages sent from different addresses.  Then you could put the phone in Do Not Disturb mode, but allow the email address of the urgent contact to pass through by putting them in Favorites.
Alternatively, you could send the notifications to an email address and use IFTTT or email filters to forward those with, for example, "urgent" in the subject to your cell phone's email address.


text:
I need help uninstalling PostgreSQL on my Mac running 10.7
I got PostgreSQL from here.
Since I'm on 10.7 OS X, I'm having problems.
I want to uninstall the software I got from enterprisedb.
Any tips?

I edited your question a bit. Am I right calling it PostgreSQL? Your original post said "postgres". Is this right? Please feel free to rollback if you didn't like the changes I made.

http://www.enterprisedb.com/resources-community/pginst-guide
There is a one-click uninstaller that removes everything except the data director and user account. The default data directory is /Library/PostgreSQL/$VERSION/data, so rm -rf that directory (or wherever you instructed the installer to create it).
To remove your postgres user (assuming it is named 'postgres'), first list your users to verify that the user 'postgres' and group 'postgres' are what you expect: (just a safe check) before deleting anything.

sudo dscl . -read /Users/postgres

sudo dscl . -read /Groups/postgres

Look for the "real name" field, to ensure that it matches the version of the db you are removing.
Then remove the user and groups:

sudo dscl . -delete /Users/postgres

sudo dscl . -delete /Groups/postgres

Obviously, be careful when using sudo.

The uninstallation instructions are at the bottom of the installation guide linked from that download page.


text:
what is DELUXE-USR-LOCAL-BIN-INSERT in ~/.profile file?
My .profile file includes the following obscure lines.  What are they for?
##
# DELUXE-USR-LOCAL-BIN-INSERT
# (do not remove this comment)
##

Is there an uncommented line immediately after that, which the comment is meant to describe? If so, what is it?

No, the subsequent lines are recognizably from other installers (like RVM).  Doing a google search I saw lots of mention of this line but nothing to describe what it was for.  It looks like some kind of directive, but I have no idea to what.

It's probably been added by some software (either made by a company called DELUXE, or the software itself is DELUXE), then the installer put that line in there, so any/all options they want to add to your .profile via some settings option in the software can be grouped after that ugly comment.

It's there as a placeholder so that scripts that look for it know where to insert their changes into the profile file.
I beleive this was from the default profile created on much older versions of OSX, since my .profile which has moved with me from Panther has this, but my work machine which is from the Leopard/Snow Leopard era does not.
I have seen links to such articles going back to 2005.
It could also have been added by a third party installer, but finding out which one is probably a zero-sum game.

These are just comments, so technically these lines shouldn’t have any functionality.
That said, my ~/.profile file contains only the following, without the comments:
set -xv

That enables the echo and verbose flags, effectively enabling “shell debugging mode”.
I’m using the latest OS X Lion 10.7.3, and haven’t experienced any kind of issue because of the missing comments.


text:
IP Masquerading Mac OS X
I am trying to figure out how to use this command with mac os x
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth2 -j MASQUERADE

The only thing I have found that seems like it might work is
ipfw add m all from me to 0.0.0.0/0

but I get: ipfw: invalid action m\n'
Does anybody know how I could translate the iptable code to mac compatible code?

Why exactly do you have to do this?

If you are just trying to share your internet connection, you can do this from System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing
If that's not why you posted this and you still do it manually(see Eir Nym's post). Don't forget to:
    sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

You can try something like following. Please, read all details here. I hope this is working with non-server Lion (as FreeBSD nature of this OS), but I haven't tested it.
 ipfw add 00010 divert natd ip from any to any via (ext int name here)
 /usr/sbin/natd -config /path/to/SL/natd.conf.apple

Below are the steps needed to set this up. en0 in this case is the external interface:
/usr/sbin/natd -interface en0
/sbin/ipfw -f flush
/sbin/ipfw add divert natd all from any to any via en0
/sbin/ipfw add pass all from any to any
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1


text:
Can Mac OS X distribute applications/processes across multiple intel cores?
Or does efficient usage of cores depend only on whether a given application is written to take advantage of them? I am deciding between a Mac Mini - Intel dual core i7 2.7Ghz vs. one with a quad core i7 2.0Ghz.

Any modern operating system, including OS X of course, will take advantage of multiple cores as best it can. Applications need to be multi-threaded to truly take advantage of this within themselves,  but even when an application is not able to take direct advantage of multiple cores, the OS will still use its resources efficiently by finding something else for the 'idle' cores to do.


text:
sshdfilter and ipfw - why are my rules flushed so often?
I have sshdfilter setup to maintain ipfw rules when someone is un invitedly trying to login my system. This has been working quite a while. Since a while - beginning to suspect the last lion upgrade (10.7.2) - I see sshdfilter adding rules and, when I check, I don't see the rules in ipfw using 'ipfw show'. When I add them manually, they show but again, after a while they are gone.
What I found in /var/log/system.log are messages like:
Nov  6 21:53:12 mac servermgrd[31448]: servermgr_ipfilter:ipfw config:Notice:Flushed IPv4 rules
Nov  6 21:53:12 mac servermgrd[31448]: servermgr_ipfilter:ipfw config:Notice:Flushed IPv6 rules

and I assume that after such a flush, my rules are in bit heaven.
How can I prevent my blocks are flushed?
My setup looks very familiar to sshdfilter improvements
edit: In the meantime I changed sshdfilterrc to add the rules to /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf. This file is imported when the flush is executed. Disadvantage is that this file has to be maintained....

I thought I had got batpoop crazy seeing that stuff in my logs. I shall follow in your footsteps.

Change /etc/sshdfilterrc to add the rules to /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf. This file is imported when the flush is executed. Disadvantage is that this file has to be maintained....
This prevents the blocks staying in bit heaven when the flush comes along because this file is read after the flush is executed.
edit: on request added changes I made in /etc/sshdfilterrc
firewalladd='/sbin/ipfw add $idx deny all from $ip to any in; echo add $idx deny all from $ip to any in >> /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf;echo +`date` $ip >>/etc/ipfilter/sshdfilter_block.log'
firewalldel='/sbin/ipfw del $idx deny all from $ip to any in;grep -v " $ip ">/tmp/ipfw.conf;mv /tmp/ipfw.conf /etc/ipfilter/ipfw.conf;echo -`date` $ip >>/etc/ipfilter/sshdfilter_block.log'

this takes care of the block and the block Cancel actions, including some block.log to see when and how long an ip has been blocked.

Can you elaborate on how to change sshdfilterrc?

edited the Answer with the modifications and a slight explanation. I hope it helps.


text:
Right Click Drag with Magic Trackpad
Is it possible to perform a "right click drag" with a Magic Trackpad?  What gestures/settings do I need to accomplish this?

I have the same problem sharing magic tracpad using synergy.  When you tap down with two fingers and lift its a right click, two fingers and hold its a scroll.
What works is two fingers, then press down hard enough to engage the physical mouse button built into the feet.
This works, but... the problem is that you can't do locked drags this way; i.e., with a USB or wireless mouse, you can right drag by pressing the right mouse button, and if you run out of mousing space, you can pick the mouse literally off the surface and as long as you continue to hold down the right button, you can continue to drag by repositioning the mouse at a different location on the surface .
Similarly, you can do locked drags with the trackpad by momentarily picking your fingers up off the surface and by repositioning them quickly enough, you can continue the drag, ad infinitum.
But if you right drag using the above described method with the trackpad, as soon as you release the pressure from the trackpad button, it springs up and the Windows VM immediately at that spot presents you with the right drag context sensitive menu.
It would work much better if you could produce the right drag by holding down a key such as Ctrl, Option, etc., with your second hand while performing a normal three-finger drag on the trackpad with your first hand. But contrary to the next most recent answer, this does not produce a right drag action in Windows.
Feb 2015/Windows 7 in Parallels 10 in Yosemite/ I've found sequence Ctrl+Shift, then 3 finger drag then lift off trackpad THEN release Ctrl+Shift works for me (in Audition 1.0/Frequency Analysis adjusting horizontal scale)

I don't like pressing hard to drag, I use the 3-finger-drag gesture. With this it is easy to right-drag, just hold ctrl on the keyboard and drag with three fingers on the Trackpad.

This is exactly how I'd do it

In Windows 7 under Parallels I can right-drag with the Magic Trackpad by clicking and dragging with two fingers. I can also click with two fingers and continue dragging with one to get a right drag. I don't think OSX has a right-drag.


text:
Saving a Safari page as a PNG image
Is there some way in Safari, possibly via a third-party extension, to save the running contents of a Web page as a PNG image?
I understand I could print the page to PDF and use Preview to export it as a PNG image. However:

I’d prefer not to create a temporary PDF file and then manually open Preview to export the PDF contents to PNG;
I’d like the contents to be running instead of paginated, i.e., no page breaks;
When the PDF file contains multiple pages, Preview seems to export the current page only to PNG.

I don’t have any experience with OS X automation but I suspect it could be used for this, though I want conditions 2 and 3 to be met.
I’m running Safari 5.1.1 on OS X Lion.

What if the Web page requires you to log in to view the content? I tried paparazzi in this situation and it shows me the login page. Can you pass credentials to paparazzi?

As of October 5, 2020, the currently selected answer recommending Paparazzi is no longer necessary. See this answer below for a way to make the screenshot in Safari with extensions: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/342563/7828

Try Paparazzi! It can save the entire website to a single png file and it lets you specify the size. Once installed, you can also launch it from within Safari by adding 'paparazzi:' to the URL. For example paparazzi:http://www.nytimes.com

This is probably the best solution for the problem. Very Mac-like UI, easy way of invoking it and lets you save the entire page length in one image (with custom width). Also, it's free (with donations welcome).

Not sure when it got added, but certainly in Safari 12 you can do this without any extensions. You need to enable the Safari Developer menu (tick in advanced settings).  Now you can select "Show Web Inspector" in the "Develop" menu which will open a window showing the page source.  Hover your cursor over the  tag and right click it. Then, select the "Capture screenshot" option and save when prompted.
If you only want a specific element, just right click on the appropriate bit of html.  If you are not sure, as you hover over the code the corresponding screen element is highlighted blue.
Of course, I'm now wondering if this could be apple scripted...

This is a good native solution. If you are happy with a PDF instead of a PNG it's even easier, just choose File > Export as PDF

This is the best answer. The others are not as good as they make a fresh request and don't save the page as is, logged in, with updated content, etc.

PS: @Andrew I'd suggest making that a full answer, it's the perfectly solution.

webkit2png should be pretty close to Safari. It also works with webarchive files saved from Safari.
$ webkit2png -F http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/30637 -o nameprefix
Fetching http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/30637 ...
 ... done
$ webkit2png ~/Downloads/test.webarchive
Fetching ~/Downloads/test.webarchive ...
 ... done
$ ls
0testwebarchive-clipped.png 0testwebarchive-thumb.png
0testwebarchive-full.png    nameprefix-full.png

Awesome Screenshot is an extension for that should support full page screenshots. I couldn't get them to work with all pages though.

Interesting. I’d rather have a solution that could be triggered via Safari, though.

Promising but capturing the whole page (as opposed to the current viewport) doesn’t work well. :-/

AwesomeScreenshot is widely considered to be malware.

Here is how to save a full web page with Safari, Chrome and Firefox without any plugin or third party software - it uses the developer tools included with each browser.
https://gist.github.com/algal/972c43b533cade4332faf4ec4458fd93
Also works when you need to scroll.

Welcome to Ask Different!  We're trying to find the best answers and those answers will provide supporting info as to why they're the best.  Answers should be self-contained so explain why you think the answer you provided will solve the problem or is better/more complete than the others already provided.  See [answer] on how to provide a quality answer. - From Review

This is a great reference, thanks!

To capture the whole page
With current versions of Safari (14+), this is really simple:
File > Export as PDF..
Will save a PDF version of the whole page with no page breaks and all styling intact.
Note that the other way of creating a pdf, via File > Print... does something different. It will respect any print-specific stylesheets on the page and break the PDF into print-ready pages.
To capture part of the page
If you want a sub-section of the page, @Alan's answer is the best way to do it. First make sure you have Safari's developer tools turned on, then right click the parent element you want to capture and Inspect Element:

This will open up the Elements pane of the dev tools.
From here you can right-click on any element you want (the one you inspected will be highlighted by default) and choose Capture Screenshot:

I am using LittleSnapper, which has a feature to "Snap Web Address from Safari":

The LittleSnapper menu item and browser bookmarklet both allow you to snap webpages as you visit them - no interruption required. Alongside these tools, there's even a Safari Extension that allows you to add a Snap button to the Safari toolbar. LittleSnapper also saves the HTML behind each page for future reference.

Little snapper is gone, the page has gone 404.

@jorisw, LittleSnapper is no longer exists.  Its replacement, Ember, is no longer exists too.


text:
Reinstall Mac App Store on Mac OS 10.7?
I accidentally removed the Mac App from my Mac Mini while removing the iTunes 10.5 Beta. How can I reinstall the Mac App Store?

For a similar problem with 10.6.8, see http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17687/re-install-the-app-store-application-on-osx-10-6-8

Unfortunately patrix I can't use the 10.6.8 update combo to fix this :/

Here's the .app file off my machine: http://cl.ly/0f293H081S2e1Y2B3f1r

Awesome, thank you. I'm restoring my machine to see if that will work from a Time Machine backup right now. But if that doesn't work I'll try your copy. I'll get back to you if everything works out okay.

Also, before I started the restore, the Mac App Store blank icon was still in my apps folder and it wouldn't let me delete it.

I can confirm that the .app file posted by XAleXOwnZX worked. Thanks very much!

@donturner hehehe you just installed malware! Just kidding, enjoy :p glad I could help

oh, good question. Maybe install a basic Lion system onto an external HD and copy the app from there? Or you don't have a backup like Time Machine or anything similar, do you?
Maybe someone with an identical version of the OS can zip the file and send it to you.
I think that whatever way you wanna do it, copying the app from one Mac to another should work. As long as the OS versions match of course...

Okay, sweet. I just did a backup with Time Machine a few hours ago. I'll try to get ahold of a friend who has 10.7.2 that can copy it over for me. Also I think I can reinstall it from the Lion Recovery, but i'm not sure. That's what they seem to be telling me on the Apple Discussions board https://discussions.apple.com/message/16715675#16715675


text:
Iphone photo albums downloads
I have 2 seperate photo albums on my iphone.  I have downloades one of the albums to my computer, but can't figure out how to switch to download the other album. When phone is hooked to computer itunes only reccognizes one of the photo albums and I can't figure out how to switch...any help out there?

Are you running iOS 5?  If so, the new albums you can create in iOS 5 are only for temporarily classifying photos from your Camera Roll.  But once you remove them from Camera Roll, they will also disappear from your Albums.
Thus, there is no circumstance where a photo would ONLY be in your Album and not in your Camera Roll, unless by Album you mean the Sync'ed Photos that have always been available through iTunes.


text:
iTunes starts playing music automatically when watching Apple TV
Every time I pause or unpause Netflix on Apple TV it starts playing iTunes music on my computer, even with wi-fi and home sharing turned off.
How do I disable iTunes from launching when using Apple TV?

Your remote is detected by both machines at the same time. They obviously do not know to whom the command is addressed, therefore this happens.
You have two choices:

Disable infrared remote reception on your Mac. On your Mac, go to 'System Preferences' and then 'Security & Privacy'. Select the 'Advanced' button in the lower right corner. Check the box that says "Disable remote control infrared receiver" and click "OK'. Apple documentation.
Pair your remote with a particular device. To pair a remote with your Mac, follow instructions above and select the 'Pair' button to the right of the 'Disable remote' checkbox. To pair a remote with your Apple TV, go to 'Settings' > 'general' > 'remotes' from the AppleTV main menu, and then choose 'Pair Apple Remote'. You can pair 2 different remotes with each machine, but you won't be able to pair one remote with both machines. Apple documentation.

I agree with the instructions for disabling remote detection.  That's what I do with my Mac mini that's in the same room as the ATV.  However, I think the OP's problem (and my original problem) is that the remote can somehow control both devices at once.  Turning the Mac's infrared off should solve David's problem, as it did mine.


text:
Destroyed user account on OS X with dscl; how to restore?
I was trying to create a new user on my OS X Lion machine, and somehow managed to destroy my own user's account. Here are the steps I took; hopefully someone here can recognize what I did, and maybe identify some way around this.
First, I ran these commands:
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch /bin/bash # mistake!
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch RealName "Elastic Search"
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch UniqueID 503 # MY uniqueID
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch PrimaryGroupID 1000
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/elasticsearch NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/elasticsearch

The big mistake I made here was using "503", which was my user's UniqueID. Immediately my shell username changed to "elasticsearch". I fiddled around, tried to change the current user with sudo su -u sritchie, but this didn't work.
On restart, only the "Elastic Search" user was available. I logged into the Lion Recovery partition and reset the root password.
After logging in as root and checking on the terminal, I made the remarkable discovery that my home folder was totally empty. I deleted the elasticsearch user, but it made no difference. I don't see anything in Deleted Users either.
The odd thing is that when I log in now as myself (sritchie) I can see desktop icons with previews. I can even open a few text files from the Downloads folder if I use the dock alias to Downloads.
Could this data be hiding somewhere? Any help would be REALLY appreciated!
Thanks,
Sam

I hope you took a backup of your machine before the sudo command that deleted your account was run. If you have a (Time Machine) backup, you should be able to restore your deleted account & files to a point in time before the deletion occurred. Otherwise, you're probably out of luck.


text:
Switch Between Apps With Alt-Tab / Command-Tab on iPad or iPhone using Bluetooth Keyboard
I have both iOS devices and with keyboards. I could be much more productive if I could do Alt-Tab / Command-Tab app switching using my keyboard. Is there any way to do this? Is there any way to switch between the two most recent apps or anything similar?

Here's another article on how to do this.
http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2012/06/22/0023

As of iOS 9 the ability to switch between apps is included in the operating system. Just hook up a keyboard and press command+tab to switch between apps.

No, there isn't a way to do this. As an alternative, I would suggest enabling multitasking gestures (Settings > General > Multitasking Gestures). With them on, you can switch to the next/previous app with a four-finger swipe, instead of bringing up the multitasking bar. You can actually swipe through all of the apps in the multitasking bar, in the same order (order of last use). Note that getting to an app through this gesture does not change their order, so if you swipe left to get to an app, you will swipe right to go back.

I'm afraid that's pretty useless for me. the reason why I bought a wireless keyboard was so that I didn't have to swipe and tap on the screen and keep the screen at arms length. :( what I really need is an external mouse, but when I bought a bought a Bluetooth mouse the iPad could not see it, apple support said they don't want people to use mice on an iPad' why do they care?

Still no support for cmd+tab as of iOS 8. The wait continues.

See here: http://richmintz.com/2011/04/ipad-app-switching-using-your-bluetooth-keyboard/
I haven't tried it, but if your keyboard has a home button, you should be able to double click it to get the task switcher up. So it seems it should be easy.

Method copied from source

First, you activate VoiceOver on the iPad, and specify that a Home button triple-press will turn VoiceOver on or off. Then, you just learn a few simple commands and practice, and a lot of common quickie things (like app switching, scrolling through web pages, etc.) become possible without taking your hands off the keyboard. This is most useful when, e.g., you’re writing a blog post on the iPad, in the WordPress app, using the keyboard, and you want to hop over to a web page for a second to check something. Now you can do that without your hands leaving the keyboard, as follows:

press ctrl-opt-H twice to bring up the app switcher
press right-arrow to move to Safari, then ctrl-opt-spacebar to tap
press opt-down-arrow to scroll in Safari (or, if needed, right-arrow to move to the page selection button, etc.)
when done, switch back, via ctrl-opt-H twice, then right-arrow as needed, then ctrl-opt-spacebar to tap

This works great on my Anker Bluetooth keyboard. Just hold Fn then Esc twice.

On my iPhone 6s Plus with iOS 12 and a Realike Bluetooth external keyboard, which has an iOS mode, it is the ESC button alone, with no modifiers. Hitting ESC twice brings up app switcher. However, I can’t find any keys that then move between apps. Alt+Tab mac-like app switcher does not work for me. However Alt+Space bar does bring up spotlight search. I can search then for the app name, and if (IF!) it narrows down to the only suggestion, then hitting enter switches to it.

Edit: Below is pre-iOS9. See updated (accepted) answer below from Anonymous
In brief: It is possible, but not quite "alt-tab". Enable VoiceOver.
This is described here: http://decadentwaste.net/2011/03/navigate-using-a-bluetooth-keyboard-on-your-ios-device/
I believe this is also referenced from Graham Wheeler's answer. Sorry that I can't comment directly.
The article describes how to use the built-in "accessibility" options to navigate pretty much anything with the keyboard. I've tried it out using the basic Apple Wireless keyboard, which doesn't have a home button for example. I can now scroll, launch apps, switch apps from the keyboard.
Note, for comfort, I recommend setting the home button to enable/disable this voiceover mode. In addition, since the default for VoiceOver is to use spoken navigation for the UI, Opt-Control-S will mute the voiceover speech.

Link is dead as of 20140926. Here's archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20111023223347/http://decadentwaste.net/2011/03/navigate-using-a-bluetooth-keyboard-on-your-ios-device/

If you're jailbroken, you can install BeeKeyboard and Multitasktures to do this.

It's been added in iOS 9 or it was on before. I use an Anker Bluetooth keyboard.  I can Alt Tab just fine with it!

If one of you is using a simulator on MacOS, you should press "I/O" in the MacOS menu, and then "Input" -> "Send Keyboard Input to device".
After this, you can switch between apps with Cmd+Tab

The OP does not ask for how to Alt-Tab using the simulator, but with physical devices. Please amend your answer to keep it on-topic.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.


text:
what is Siri consuming? is Wifi enough? or 3g celluar data is involved while Siri searches online?
So I am concerned if I can save data usage(I have only 200M per month on my account..) by using Siri at home(with a wifi connection)??

Totally offtopic for this site, but this should be of some use: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/how-data-heavy-is-siri-on-an-iphone-4s-ars-investigates.ars

You will save on data usage if you only use Siri at home with a wifi connection. Siri sends the raw audio of your talking to its servers, so the data usage will be comparable to using VoIP. Although that's only if you talk constantly to Siri (which I'm actually seeing some people at work doing these days).


text:
Mac OSX hard disk gives invalid PEOF - how do I back up data?
Yesterday my macbook pro (running 10.6.8) refused to reboot, and after booting it using the install disk and running disk utility I got Invalid catalog PEOF. The volume could not be verified completely. So, from the looks of it, I may have to reinstall the OS:

Is there anything else I can try?
If not, how can I access the disk and try and save some data before formatting (if at all)?

I'm not stranger to command line unix and all that if needs be. Any help will be great, thanks.

Do you have another Mac? If so you can connect the failed Mac to your other mac via firewire and you target disk mode.
Power off the failed mac, connect it to the working mac via firewire. (The working mac can already be powered on) Boot the failed mac and immediately hold down the T key on the failed mac. Continue holding it until the firewire icon shows up on screen. You should then see the mac mounted on the working mac.
Link with more details http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
Also an interesting link with some details on your error http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21624?viewlocale=en_US

Just one mac.. Also have an ipad and linux box.

Linux should be able to read HFS+ so you might be in luck. Give it a shot.

If you don't have firewire as an option, here's how I recently recovered almost all my files using DiskWarrior:

Boot your machine from your install disk
Run Disk Utility
Create a new image of your corrupt disk on an external drive.  To do this, connect your external drive then select the corrupted drive in Disk Utility and click on the "New Image" icon in the top menubar.  Compressed is ok.  This could take a lot of time and space depending on the size of your disk.
Plug the drive with the new image into another computer with DiskWarrior installed
I was not able to mount the image in Finder (double-clicking on the dmg file), so I went into the terminal and manually mounted the image.  I used this call to ignore warnings and basically force it to mount:
sudo hdiutil attach -noverify -mount suppressed /yourpath/yourimage.dmg
Launch DiskWarrior and choose the blank entry in the drop-down to rebuild the directory structure

Since DiskWarrior does not provide terminal access when booting from the DVD, there is no way I could find to directly force the mount on the existing machine, hence the extra step of copying the image out.


text:
iPod Equalizer issue
I bought a new gen iPod nano and filled it with my best songs.
But when I connected it to my car's audio jack so the music would play through the speakers,
all of the songs sounded flat and weak. I set the equalizer to what sounded best, but it still sounds awful. Sort of muffled and plain. What did iTunes or the iPod do to my songs that made them this way and how can I fix it?

What happens when you set equalizer to POP?  Does the sound change?                                                   Are you playing music converted from a CD?  If yes, what import settings did you use?

Well, there are actually a number of different things that COULD be wrong. For example, the Auxiliary (or AUX) cord could have been frayed on the inside, or someone might have chipped a bit of their own cord inside which you just didn't notice, or something else had your attention. You might not have pushed the cord in all the way, at the same time, some systems work better with the cord NOT pushed in all the way, in which case I suggest GENTLY and SLOWLY loosening the cord from the hole to see if the sound gets better.
The new nano might have come with a (thankfully rare) defect, so you can try taking it to a Genius bar, or if you call Apple about it, depending on the severity of the problem (and if they have nothing to do and are bored) they might charge you, and send you a new iPod in the mail, and wait for you to send yours back to them in the box, pending this return before they give back the money they charged as security (to make sure you didn't try to rob them). Now, if all of the above fail, there are 2 things that could be the problem. One problem could be that your car doesn't support the iOS on the new iPod, or the car just wasn't made for adapting to new iPod versions.

I think Kristy is pursuing the right avenue in the first paragraph, but my first question would be "what is the Nano's volume setting?" I haven't tested the output voltage of a Nano, but with an original iPod, you wanted the volume set to full (in practice, I'd decrease it slightly) to get a line-level output from the headphone jack.

Thanks @jaberg, to be honest, I actually hadn't thought of that at all

Kristy—feel free to edit your answer to include this if you feel it's appropriate.

@jaberg Thanks, but no thanks, i don't feel it would be right to take any credit for your own answer.

Not a problem. You'd get the credit if I did the edit. At least for me, it's about answers, not reputation.


text:
How do I move my iPhone contacts to Gmail?
I have an iPhone that is already synced with my iMac, but I am away on leave and am using a Windows 7 computer. I need to send the contacts I've created on my iPhone to my Gmail account online, because I am going to update my iPhone's operating system and want to be sure I do not lose the contacts on my phone. I know I will probably lose my music, but that's okay.

There's a way to do this from your iMac.  Can you gain remote access to your iMac or work with someone who could access it?

This Google product forums link contains or links to several of the answers people have already submitted.  Including it because it is 'official' and relatively recent.

Since end of 2012, Google has ended support for the Exchange protocol, so you would not be able to sync your iPhone contacts with your Gmail account via Exchange. Instead use the Gmail account method directly via Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add account... > Gmail, enter your Gmail account credentials and enable contact sync.
You can alternatively export your iPhone contacts to your computer to a single vCard file and then import the contacts file to your Gmail account.

This is the easiest way to upload iPhone contacts to Gmail:

Download your contacts from icloud.com (Select All -> Export).
Upload them to your Gmail Account.
You can manage your contacts from https://contacts.google.com/

Source: http://www.unlockboot.com/2016/04/upload-contacts-from-iphone-to-gmail.html

I am assuming that the Windows 7 iTunes display of Devices frame.
In iTunes → Devices (the side bar) → Select your iPhone device → Info tab (at the top) → Sync Contacts click/check Sync Google Contacts and click Configure... to enter your Gmail account info.

Turning on contact sync with your Gmail/Google Apps account on your iPhone will sync/upload all your contacts to Google.
Refer to Google's instructions on how to do this:

Open the Settings application on your device's home screen.
Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Press Add Account....
Select Microsoft Exchange.

In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address.
Leave the Domain field blank.
Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
Tap Next at the top of your screen.
When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
Press Next at the top of your screen again.
Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync.

There are three options for keeping your contacts synced. You can keep your device's contacts and sync just your My Contacts group, you can sync only Google Contacts and wipe your device's contacts, or you can merge your contacts via iTunes and sync only the contacts that stream with your phone.

13a. If you would like to keep your existing contacts on your device select the Keep on my iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes. If you choose to keep existing contacts, you will sync the contents of the My Contacts group.
13b. If you have all your contacts in Google and you want to start syncing them to your device and don't want to keep the contacts on your phone, tap Delete Existing Contacts. If there are no contacts on your phone, the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.
13c. If you have all your contacts on your device and want to import them into Google, you can synchronize your Google Contacts with iTunes. All Contacts and Calendars that you sync with iTunes will be put into the On My iPhone Contacts and Calendar groups on your phone. iOS currently doesn't allow you to move Contacts or Calendar events from the On My iPhone groups to the Google Sync groups.

Look at this thread in Google forums.
My personal best way to sync with Google is iTunes (without Mac OS X) or AddressBook.app (on Mac OS X) at the moment.
Some answers are below, but have a look to the page:

(iCloud control panel for Windows)
You have to stop sharing your contacts in iCloud, and then preferences you sync Address book as you did before and sync with iTunes
Export contacts from GMail & import them into Address Book and then… merge yourself.
Set up your Gmail contacts via Exchange on your iPhone. http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740 . This is the only way I know of to actually synchronize your Gmail Contacts to your iPhone directly from Gmail’s servers over the Internet via Push.
Third-party services like Soocial, NuevaSync and others.
Third-party programs for your phone

While the link you posted (the thread link) may answer the question, it is best to summarize the contents of the link in your answer, then provide the link for reference. Links have a tendency disappear over time, leaving a non-applicable answer for those who may stumble upon your answer in the future.

Awesome! Much better. Thanks for taking the time to do that!

This may work for you.
You can get an iCloud account free using your iPhone. or the via the PC.
You can sync your contacts to the iCloud. From there you can export all your contacts out as a vCard file from the iCloud Addressbook web interface.
Then in gmail import the file.
Here  is a link to my answer to a similar question that shows you how to export from the iCloud Addresbook.

If you prefer not to synchronize your adressbook with your computer it is easy to synchonize your iPhone Contacs directly to Gmail.
I followed the instructions from Contacts sync between the iPhone and Gmail using CardCAV.

On your iPhone open “Settings” then go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and choose “Add Account”
Select “Other” and look under “Contacts” to choose “Add CardDav Account”
Enter the following details into the fields, then tap “Next”. Server: google.com, User Name: googleemailaddress@gmail.com, Password: your password
Syncing starts immediately, exit out of Settings and launch the “Contacts” app to check on the progress, the entire process may take a while for large address books

This approach works well to solve another problem where you only want to see contacts with phone numbers on your iPhone.

There are several approaches to transfer iPhone contacts to GMAIL
A) from SIM card using iPhone only
B) using iTunes
C) using vCard file
but FIRST you need to establish a sync between your iPhone and GMAIL

Set up your GMAIL account on your iPhone for calendar sync:

on iPhone open Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Add Account> Google
enter your credentials
enable 'Contacts'
OR follow Google's instructions.

on the iPhone, open Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars

scroll to section 'Contacts'
open Default Account
select your GMAIL account

A) transfer contacts from SIM card to GMAIL directly
Straight foward but only applies to contacts on the SIM card.
On your iPhone, open  Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Import SIM Contacts. Choose to import SIM Contacts to "Google Mail Calendar".
B) transfer contacts from iPhone using iTunes
Sorry, the answers given here referring to iTunes syncinc Contacts to Google Contacts do not apply any longer as this option was removed from iTunes 11.1 and later.
C) transfer contacts from iPhone using iCloud & vCard file
Follow the instructions provided here.
Basically, you enable syncinc your contacts to the iCloud and then download the contacts from the iCloud as vCard file using the browser. You can then import this file into GMAIL.
PS: Instructions tested on iOS 8.x

As I understand your contacts are not on iCloud, but just synced locally with your Mac. What I would do is to share them to Gmail from your Mac: Preferences > On my Mac > synchronize with Google.
That way you'll have two ways syncing between Gmail and your Mac + your Mac will sync with your iPhone.

If you're looking to just move your contacts in bulk, you could buy this $5 app and be done in a few seconds - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/contact-mover/id456984826

It appears you are possibly affiliated with the new app you mentioned. Please see the section "Avoid overt self-promotion" here.  You must disclose in your answer any affiliation. It is also helpful to include additional information in your answer, beyond the link.


text:
I want to hear sound of push notification when sound is turned off (like iOS alarm clock)
When I receive a push notification no sound is played when the sound is switched of on the device (with switch on side of iPhone).
When I add an alarm event in the iOS clock I do hear the sound although sound is switched off.
Can I force to play sound with Push notifications when sound is switched off?

everybody thanks for the response (this was a programming question)
with regards,
Frank
PS I don't know what is meant by fixing up my accept rate but I'll have a look into that...

You can't, the push notification is handled by the iOS. If the user muted his device there is no way force it to play sound on receiving a push notification.
The reason the alarm can play a sound is because it is not bound by the apple rules for app s from the app store.

I actually don't believe apps are forced to obey the Silent Mode setting - they are just encouraged to do so. Still, this answer is correct: the Alarm Clock ignores Silent Mode, push notifications evidently do not.


text:
Can I send files using bluetooth to a device that is not discoverable but previously paired?
I can send files using the built-in Bluetooth File Exchange on OSX Lion just fine, except it requires me to put my phone in a discoverable state. However, since this is an Android phone, it stops being discoverable after 120 seconds. In addition, I have a nice Bluetooth toggle on my home screen but I can't get one for BT and discoverable.
The Phone is paired with my MacBook, so I was wondering if somehow I could bypass the discoverable requirement for previously paired bluetooth devices.

Normally, yes. Click the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, your phone should be listed in the “Devices” category. From there, you can toggle actions on it.

Turns out, if you're using Bluetooth File Exchange (not the status bar icon, but the full app), then you have to browse the device once. After that it's set. I was only sending files, hence the problem.


text:
How to switch off the GPS (but not disable location tracking) on an iPhone?
Is there any way to switch off the GPS on an iPhone 4, so that the location tracker application can use GSM instead (this is only to save my battery)?

It can't be done.  It really depends on the application that is requesting your location.  App Developers, when requesting the device's location, can choose how accurate of a location they need.  If they decide they need less accuracy, then iOS will only fire up WiFi or use GSM to determine the approximate location.  If the developer decides they need very specific location, then the phone will fire up the GPS.


text:
What is the python-style equivalent of virtual environments but for a user account on a Mac OS?
I want to install different packages and software but I really don't like the idea of doing a sudo command to install anything.
I use Homebrew and MacPorts for getting any apps I need but is it possible to install applications, libraries and packages specific to a python style virtual environment and if I think I don't want these packages to collide, I can just delete a virtual environment or simply use a different environment?
Please let me know if the question does not make sense. Ever since I started using virtual environments in Python, I can't imagine not working with virtual environments and I was wondering if there is something equivalent or a pattern of installation that people recommend that would mimic that behavior?
ps> I know there is Fink also but I don't use it.

Version 2:
I think I need to verify my question further.
I already use virtualenvwrapper and do everything Python related in virtual environments. The question is independent of Python. Its just that virtualenv inspired me to see if there was an equivalent, user-account-wide.
What I figured would be awesome, came up when I was trying to install libjpeg, PIL, FreeType2, Pillow etc.
I wanted to install these libraries or packages like libjpeg, FreeType2 in a virtual environment of the OS. If I felt like the Homebrew version of these library installs was not to my satisfaction, I could just work in a different environment or try some other installation procedures and switch between environments of the installed applications.
So, I was wondering if something like that exists for OS X or are there some tricks one can do to emulate it?

I'm not sure I understand your question correctly, but why not use virtual machines? Have a look at VirtualBox in combination with Vagrant (vagrantup.com).

If you are dead set on that paradigm, then virtual machines seems to be a logical next step, no? Grab Virtualbox and do your thing in a VM.
Note however that package managers solve many problems virtualenv addresses. The libs you mention won't change interfaces radically, they are stable releases.
It's python libs which are the most volatile, not things like FreeType. I would just use whatever version X11 is using.

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking but, if you are asking about creating Python virtual environments using virtualenv, then you're there already.  The advantage of using virtualenv is that it creates a self-contained Python instance within the virtual environment directory you create.  When you use the python and pip commands within the virtualenv bin directory (which is what happens when you activate the virtualenv), any Python packages you install, whether it be with python setup.py or pip install or even easy_install are installed to a site-library directory within the virtual environment and have no effect on any other Python installations on your system.  The virtual environment directory and its contents are subject to normal file system permissions so you can create it without the need to use sudo (say, if you create it somewhere within your home directory) and you can set file permissions to control whether any other users have access to the virtualenv.  Unless you use the --no-site-packages option when creating the virtualenv, the virtualenv will have access to existing or new packages added to the base Python instance (the system Python or whichever other one you used to create the virtualenv, by default, the Python instance that virtualenv was originally installed in).  But packages installed local to the virtual environment do not affect the original Python instance.  If you used virtualenv --no-site-packages, no packages outside of the Python standard library will be "inherited" by the virtual environment.
You can use virtualenv in conjunction with third-party package managers like MacPorts, Homebrew, or Fink (they include virtualenv ports/recipes/packages) but within a virtual environment you will need to manage local Python packages yourself, presumably using the pip installed inside each virtual environment. virtualenv does not provide a mechanism for managing entities that are not packaged using Python standard distutils-style packaging, i.e. non-Python apps and C libraries.


text:
Setting Safari SSL/TLS Cipher Suites
Does anyone know how to set the priority order of SSL/TLS cipher suites on Safari for Mac OSX (10.7 ideally, but any version would be helpful). Can't seem to find any documentation on that point.

Unfortunately, AFAIK, this setting does not exist. (It doesn't exist in another WebKit browser, either: Google Chrome. You can do this in Firefox, though, using 'about:config'.)
About hard-coded cipher priorities/support for the SSL/TLS handshake:
I tested that Safari does not support 40-bit RC4 encryption with an MD5 hash. This means that it does not support some products that are required by US export law to use low (<64-bit) encryption.
See also:
http://www.carbonwind.net/blog/post/A-quick-look-over-some-browsers-and-their-SSLTLS-implementations.aspx
"Initially, in SSL/TLS negotiations, TLS with RSA and weak 128-bit RC4 keys are offered first and second in the cipher order. Worse, ECC (Elliptical Curve Cryptography), AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), and 256-bit keys are never offered as potential cipher choices; further, MD5 is offered first and more frequently than SHA-1, when it should be the other way around."
By Roger A. Grimes, Infoworld    Feb 1, 2009 1:19 pm
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158706/how_secure_is_safari.html


text:
mysql.sock gets deleted on restart
I have set up PHP and MySQL, however MySQL wants the mysql.sock file in /var/mysql, which is fair enough. I change the directory to /var/mysql however every time I restart my computer mysql.sock gets deleted and I can't work.
Has anyone got any ideas on how I can fix this problem?

Shouldn't mysql.sock be created automatically when the server starts? Have you made sure the MySQL server restarts automatically when you restart?

It would also be useful to say how you've installed MySQL: official installer, MacPorts, some MAMP bundles, ...?

Hey Richard, getting back to you: was your problem solved? If so, then please validate the answer by clicking the check next to it, so that future passers-by know they can use this method  :)  Otherwise, please leave a comment and add some details, so that we can figure out another way to help you!

It is not ridiculous at all. I'd assume that, seeing you're coming from a Windows environment, you simply don't understand Unix sockets.
An Unix socket file is created when mysqld is started up, and mysql.sock is that file. It is a faster alternative to TCP/IP for use on a local system.
So yeah, it is actually totally normal that the file is deleted when you restart your computer: once the server is off, there's no reason for the communication line (socket) to still be open.
Your problem is not about the file missing, but about the server not starting up automatically on restart. You probably didn't have this problem “on Windows at work” not because of Windows, but because of work, where your workstation was set up to start MySQL server on boot.
Simply check the “Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup” checkbox in the MySQL prefpane (in System Preferences) if you used the standard installer, or see the “MySQL does not start on startup” question in case of a problem on Lion or another installation method.

Ok, that makes sense, the problem now is the server won't even start since i've changed the location of where mysql.sock file is created, even with the "Automatically Start MySQL" check selected. However when I change the location back to /tmp/ folder low and behold it works again!!! But the web page with still try and look for the mysql.sock back in the /var/mysql/ directory. I've installed everything into Mac itself and not using any MAMP or other server programs to do this. Sorry for the very Amateur questions.


text:
How to change permissions for etc folder mac?
When I check the permission on my etc folder using the alt + i command, I am not able to check the permission. As if the file had no permissions at all.
This occured to me while I was trying to write some stuff in the hosts file.
I tried to manually chmod the file but I got an "operation not allowed".

Belongs on Super User? And did you try using sudo?

The /etc directory on a mac isn't a directory at all, it's a symlink (shortcut). It redirects to private/etc.
You won't be able to chmod the directory, because it belongs to the root user by default. If you want to chmod it you'll have to prefix the command with 'sudo' to run as the superuser.
Bearing that in mind, make sure you know what you're doing before you start playing around with system directories and their permissions.

You can use the old unix comand line chmod
chmod 777 ./folder

With 777 you permit your file or folder do all things for all peoples. Use
man chmod

to read the help.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
bug: unable to turn on "Show date and time in menu bar"
All of a sudden, I had the date and time on the menu bar of my 10.6 machine vanish. I tried turning it on in the "Preferences >> Date and Time" section but I'm not able to.
Anyone got similar problems/found a solution to this?
If there's any additional information I can provide you, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

When you say "not able to" what do you mean?  The checkmark appears enabled, so does it select itself? If so, open Console from the Utilities folder and examine the last few entries under "All Messages" when yo try enabling it again.

If the screen image at the top of this page is correct, notice that the checkbox is NOT checked next to "Show date and time in menu bar" (topmost checkbox). That box needs to be checked. That said, I am not able to get the date to appear myself; just the time is visible.

It's possible com.apple.menuextra.clock.plist located in your user /Users/yourShortNameHere/Library/Preferences is corrupted.
Close the System Preferences window. Move that plist out of its directory, and re-launch the System Preferences.
Feedback if it doesn't work.

Hmm, there was no such file in the first place. I tried creating an empty file with the name, still no results.

You need not create the property list as it is created and maintained by the Date and Time preference pane. The fact that the file isn't there is odd. Are you logged in as a user with Admin privilege?

Yes, there is only one user - the current one(admin) I've logged in as.

Since you're logged in as an admin, that rules out permission-related issues that prevents creation of the plist. Do you have a Time Machine backup (preferably the earliest Lion backup when it still works properly)? May be worth a try to recover both the Date and Time preference panel AND the plist I mentioned in the answer above. Revert and let us know if this works.

Try launching the menu extra “by hand”. It is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Clock.menu. Try double-clicking that file.
If that does not solve the problem, then launch the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and look for something like:
SystemUIServer[205] failed to instantiate and get the principal class of bundle: NSBundle </System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Clock.menu> (not yet loaded)

(anything that mentions Clock.menu actually — should be at the end of the log files)

If the above suggestions doesn't work, I recommend you try creating a fresh new user and reboot/login from there to see if this fixes the issue. There might be a problem with your specific user.
Also what do you exactly mean by: "but I am not able to". What happens when you check the "show date and time" checkbox?

Maybe you can restore your permissions? You can find here how to do this. This will return your original permissions by factory settings. Maybe, the problem is caused by something you've done before.
Or you can try and reset your PRAM. It's not really the part which controls the time-management, but it does manage the disk-cache and some additional time-settings.
Maybe the problem will be solved after those two tips.

In Finder, open the Go -> Go To Folder menu item. Copy and paste this into the window:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/

it should look like this:

Click 'Go'
Look for "Clock.menu" in that folder and double click on it.
Alternatively, if you are comfortable in the Terminal, use
open '/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Clock.menu'

I had one thought that hasn't been covered. Your computer has a small battery on the motherboard that is supposed to last about 4-5 years. If this battery runs down, the date/time will not be stored. This is a long shot though, as I cannot remember the last time I had this problem - 8 years?
So, if the solutions above do not work, and especially the great suggestion to create a new user, the only recourse left (and it may be a good idea under the circumstances**), is to perform an clean reinstallation of your system.
I presume you have your 10.6.x disk. Make a clone (I like Carbon Copy Cloner) to an external drive, or a complete Time Machine backup.
1.Reinstall Snow Leopard.
2.Check / repair permissions as many times as necessary.
3.Perform Software Updates as many times as necessary.
4.Repeat step 2.
Let us know the outcome. Good luck.
** if there is something screwy with the date and time prefs, then other system functions may also be malfunctioning, and you don't want to end up with bad/missing data.

It may be helpful to me to know why this post was flamed. I was just trying to help.


text:
How does a family with multiple idevices and multiple laptops share music and digital movie copies?
My wife and I both have our own laptops with our own iTunes accounts. Then we have a shared desktop. In the past, this was fine as all we had for iDevices was an iPod each.  So we just managed our own music.
Now we each have an iPhone, and we have one iPad and we are looking at getting my daughter a iPod. So we still have our own iTunes accounts, but now we are getting digital copy movies which can only be associated with one iTunes account, and as you know a iPhone or iPad can only sync with one iTunes account. However, it would be nice to have our selection of movies and be able to say, hey I want this on my iPad for now, but have the option of later not having it on the iPad, but then on my iPhone.  I want to stay legal, so I would only have the movie on one device at a time, but want to be able to move them around.
Now I know if I associate all my devices to one shared iTunes account that is easy enough to do. But what if we want to maintain separate accounts so I have all my iTunes music available on my laptop instead of our shared desktop?
Then if my only option is to have one shared iTunes accounts, can I merge our accounts so I can get all purchased music and apps from each account into one?

Here's our setup:
Computers:

iMac x 1 (wife's primary computer & used by the kids)
MacBook Air x 1 (my primary computer)
MacBook Pro x 1 (wife's)

iOS Devices:

iPhone 4 x 2 (wife's and mine)
iPhone 3G x 1 (Younger Daughter's, used in airplane mode)
iPod Touch x 1 (Older Daughter's)
iPad 2 x 1 (mine but can be used by all when it's at home)
Apple TV 1st Generation x 1 (used in kid's playroom)
Apple TV 2nd Generation x 1 (used in main living room)

The Setup:
We use one Apple ID for all iTunes purchases (music, videos, books & apps) across all devices. Each user of an iOS device also has their own unique Apple ID used for iCloud.
The iMac is our main hub. All music and videos are stored on it. All iOS devices with the exception of any that are mine sync with the iMac. I maintain my own music on the MacBook Air that I manually manage (I will copy over items from the iMac that I want on to the Air and will copy over times that I have added to the Air back to the iMac - I believe that this can be automated with the use of Home Sharing when both computers are on the same network). All iOS devices that are mine sync with the my Air.
Music on the kids's and wife's iOS device are managed individually via syncing with the iMac. This goes for videos as well, however we usually only access videos when we are at home and therefor rely on the built-in Home Sharing ability of each iOS device to stream content from the iMac to the device. This is also how we use the 2nd gen Apple TV.
We have no iTunes setup on the MacBook Pro as my wife uses the Apple TV or her iPhone to listen to music and only uses the laptop for web browsing.
The 1st gen Apple TV has been jail broken and has had its hard drive upgraded. I manually copy over videos to it for the kids (only non-iTunes purchased videos).
More info on Home Sharing: http://www.apple.com/support/homesharing/getstarted/
On Merging Apple IDs:
This cannot be done: http://support.apple.com/kb/HE37 (5th question down).

as you know a iphone or ipad can only sync with one itunes account

Where did you get that idea from?
You are allowed to have multiple iTunes accounts associated with a single device. Just log out of one iTunes account, log into another account, and the second account's content will be available, while all the stuff associated with the previous account continues to work perfectly.
The App Store will even allow you to update software from an account that you're not currently logged into (this works better on iOS than inside iTunes).

I want to stay legal, so I would only have the movie on one device at a time, but want to be able to move them around.

Again, I think you're making false assumptions here. The license does allow you to have your purchases on multiple devices (I'm not sure about movie/tv rentals, they are more strict).
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't read the entire terms and conditions, but my understanding is that your content is licensed to the household, not to an individual person. Everyone in your family (so long as they live in the same house) is legally permitted to use each other's iTunes purchases.
Last time I checked you are allowed to have five macs and unlimited iOS devices attached to each account, and you are allowed to have multiple accounts on a single device (only one of them can be logged into the store at a time however).
I contacted Apple's support team with a similar question to yours and they told me to just use two accounts on all my devices. About half the content on my iPhone/iPad are with my account, and the other half are with my girlfriend's account. It works fine, though we have to be careful not to buy stuff with the other's credit card.

You could use a Time Capsule to store all the media from the iTunes libraries. This is a wireless harddrive that can be used as a network.
You can do this by using copying the location of one itunes library over to the Time Capsule, then copy the contents of all the other libraries.
Make sure that all iTunes are pointing to the destination folder on the Time Capsule.
Then all your PC's will have access to all the files in all libraries.

Basically, if you want to stay legal as you suggested, no good way exists to do this. The best bet is to not buy music and movies that are linked only to a single iTunes account. I would purchase music DRM free, and rip movies that you own using Handbrake.
Maybe this is not what you want to do, but I think it is what most people actually want the ability to do. Buying content with copy protection really locks you down in most cases. I for one, feel as though once I have bought a DVD, I should be able to watch it on as many devices as I want without worrying about usernames, logins, or what the device prefers.


text:
Cannot find where php5-fpm is stored in MacPorts
I installed php5 from macports. But i can't find php-fpm for start.
Look in /opt/local/sbin and /usr/sbin/
I used console command:
sudo port install php5
May be need some like php5 +fastcgi fscgi

FPM support is still in the works at this writing; see Trac ticket #26039.

And now it looks like FPM support has been added since then. :-)


text:
iOS's file system: where are those files that are synced with the iPad via iTune? photos, videos, etc
Where are files that are synced with the iPad via iTune stored?
For example, if you sync some image files onto the iPad via iTunes, where are those image files in the iPad?

Generally, the files are stored inside the application sandbox.
The application sandbox is a folder that stores the App and its associated files.
Every App has it's own application sandbox.
If you use file share in iTunes, the files are stored in a /Documents/ folder inside the application sandbox.
It is a bit tricky to access files that are stored outside the applications sandbox.
Apple has a good and short explanation about files in it's iOS Application Programming Guide.
If you want to access on images from the PhotoLibrary, have a look at UIImagePickerControler.


text:
How do I resolve FW800 daisychaining issues?
I use a MyBook 1Tb FW800 drive from Western Digital as my Time Machine backup, and I also have a FW800 Lexar CompactFlash card reader. My 2011 MacBook Pro only has one FW800 port so I have to daisy-chain the two devices, which both have 2 FW800 ports each.
However it seems to matter in which order I connect the items together. If I connect the drive to the Mac, then the card reader to the drive, the card reader might not show up, or the drive may dismount; I've not really had the time to tabulate all the possible permutations of chain order and port use. Are issues like this common with FW800, and is there some way I can resolve them?

An obvious, but worthwhile suggestion to make - Check you've got the latest updates and make sure your Mac's firmware is at the latest revision.

Thanks - everything is up to date. I'm fastidious to the point of OCD about this :)

Firewire attempts to use "smart" daisy chaining, which permits links in the daisy chain to be off. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work effectively. Apple recommends you first plug the device into the Macintosh, wait for it to become visible, and then add devices one at a time. 1
As for particular details with regards to your problem, I've had issues with card readers in which they either didn't really truly meet the firewire spec and therefore were unhappy with daisy chaining, or they would attempt to "smart" turn-off when a card was not in them, which caused it to also disable other parts of the chain.
In short, daisy chaining with Firewire is great, except when it isn't. YMMV.

Many thanks for the information. That KB article is really useful.


text:
How to convert Aperture license to app store license?

Possible Duplicate:
Can I update apps that I've already purchased through the Mac App Store?

Long ago I bought the retail box version of Aperture and have been steadily upgrading until the current version.  I no longer have the DVD, but I do have a valid license and serial number.
I just bought a new Mac Mini and quickly installed all my previously-purchased apps from the Mac App store.  I'd like to download Aperture this way, but don't want to buy it again.
Question: Is there any means to convert my current license to an App store license? I was hoping that when the App Store was first deployed, it would recognize my apple software and pull it into the App store model, but it did not.  (Aperture and iWork updates happen outside the app store because I didn't buy them there).
Hope that all makes sense.
Thanks!

See also http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6022/do-i-have-to-repurchase-apple-apps-through-the-mac-app-store-to-get-updates-ther

From an accepted answer by Kyle Cronin from another Ask Different question, with added emphasis:

From Daring
  Fireball:

[…] for apps that use the  same bundle ID for the both the Mac  App
    Store and non-App Store versions,  the Mac App Store will not install
    updates to already-installed non-App  Store versions, but it will
    recognize  them as being already installed. If  you want to get
    updates via the Mac  App Store, you’ll have to re-buy the  app through
    the App Store.

Quite interestingly, this was a community wiki answer prior migrating. Also quite interestingly this was migrated here, even though I had quoted an answer from a question that would be an exact duplicate.

There isn't a published method for 3rd party apps or Apple non-Pro apps (e.g. iWork).
Maybe worth a try if your current license is for Aperture 3 to use your 11-digit Aperture Support ID and contact technical support to ask. Please update here if this works to benefit future readers. Thanks.