What is the meaning of the command lsof +L1 lsof +L1

My understanding is that the command above shows files that have been deleted but are still open. These files have a “link count” of 0, meaning that there is no directory entry (no link, i.e. no name) that leads to them, but the file data still exists. The file data will be deleted when the file is closed. I commonly see references to this issue when people are talking about log files that the system is writing to. The file can be deleted but the process continues to write to the file and it takes up more and more memory. Other people have identified this sometimes as malicious behavior of malware that is trying to hide itself.

I am trying to understand how this can happen? When I open a file to read or write to in python, the file exists on the disk. I tried reading the relevant Xcode docs on file access but it is very dense. Are there different kinds of files - those in ram and those on disk?

These are named files so it is not memory being used by the application. For example, running this command on my mac reveals about 300 such files. the 'offending' processes are things like loginwindow, dock, systemUIS, sharingd,CalendarA, and lots of others. If this is stuff that a process is writing to RAM, can I 'attach' myself to the process with gdb and see what it's doing? Can i write these files to the disk to read them?

There are three things to a "file" on POSIX filesystems:

The set of data blocks - the file's actual contents.
The inode, which is a structure that holds the list of said blocks, and some metadata (size, ownership, permissions, link count, and some others).
One or more directory entries, which contain a name and an inode number (and other things)

What you see when you run ls or in file browsers are the directory entries, organized in a tree of directories and files. Each of the directory entries map the file name to an inode number. The inode number is used to locate the inode, which is used to locate the actual blocks (and check permissions, etc.)

When you create a file, an inode is created with an initial link count of one, and a directory entry is set up with the name you specified, pointing to that inode.

If you create a hard link, a second directory entry is made with the name you chose, but pointing to the same inode - both directory entries refer to the same inode (i.e. you now have two names that refer to the same file). The link count of the inode is incremented for each new hard link.

When a process opens a file, using a file name, the kernel does the directory entry lookup, finds the inode, and returns a file descriptor that "refers to" the inode, not the directory entry. The directory entry is irrelevant once the file has been opened - it is just a convenient way to locate the right inode.

When you delete a file (e.g. using rm), you're not actually deleting the file, you're deleting the directory entry. The kernel decrements the inode's link count, but doesn't delete the inode (and reclaim space) unless:

that directory entry was the last one pointing to it (i.e. link count is down to zero - this is what lsof +L1 lists: open files that are completely unlinked)
there are no remaining open file descriptors that refer to it

So processes can continue operating on that file, even if there is no way to get back to it from browsing the filesystem. And you can get apparent inconsistencies from the output of df and du for instance:

df interrogates the filesystem to see how many free blocks it has. The data blocks from the "hidden" files with no more directory entries are not free (there are still processes that can read/write them), so they still occupy space and will continue occupying that space until the last file descriptor that refers to them is closed
du lists directory entries and sums up sizes. It can't see these unlinked files, and will thus return less space used than the filesystem will.

If the files are on traditional disks, they continue to occupy disk space just like normal, still linked files. IO happens as normal. It doesn't have more main memory requirements/start eating RAM.

If the unlinked but open files are in a filesystem backed by RAM, then they continue to occupy memory, as they did before being unlinked. (In both cases the files can still grow/shrink too.)

The space will be reclaimed only when the last open file descriptor is closed. (Note that still open file descriptors get closed when a process exits or is otherwise terminated.)

If you attach a debugger to a program that is using unlinked files, you won't see anything particularly interesting. File IO calls will look exactly the same as for normal, still linked, files. Nothing special going on there. By inspecting what is read/written you might get some ideas about what the process is using these files for, but that's about it.

As for accessing these files, I'm afraid I don't know OS X enough to tell if there's an easy way. The fdesc pseudo-filesystem looks like it could be useful, but apparently only gives you access to the current process's files.

A simple example of how a process can do this, in perl. (Can be done with just about any language, including shell scripts.)

Setup and helper function:

#! /usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Fcntl qw(SEEK_SET); # for rewinding

my $fh;                 # file descriptor/handle
my $test_file = "./test_file";

sub status {            # checks if the file is "visible"
  my @st = stat($test_file);
  if (@st) {
    print "$test_file: file exists\n";
  } else {
    print "$test_file: error: $!\n";
  }
}

The main part:

# open file in read/write mode, creating it if it doesn't exist
# (overwriting it if it does)
if (!open($fh, '+>', $test_file)) {
  die "Failed to open $test_file: $!";
}
print $fh "Some data before unlink.\n";
status();
unlink($test_file);
status();
print $fh "Some data after unlink.\n";

# Rewind
seek($fh, 0, SEEK_SET);
# Print file contents
foreach my $line (<$fh>) {
  print "read: $line";
}
# Close
close($fh);

Expected output:

 $ perl test.pl
./test_file: file exists
./test_file: error: No such file or directory
read: Some data before unlink.
read: Some data after unlink.

You can move the unlink around a bit (before or after the prints), won't change anything. There's nothing special about the file handle after the unlink, can be used as any other file handle (as long as it is kept open).


QuickTime component causing errors when running osascript command If I run a simple osascript from the command line:

osascript -e 'tell app "Safari" to activate'

I get hundreds of this error:

2019-01-19 13:07:31.224 osascript[3908:9313907] Error loading /Library/QuickTime/EyeTV MPEG Support.component/Contents/MacOS/EyeTV MPEG Support:  dlopen(/Library/QuickTime/EyeTV MPEG Support.component/Contents/MacOS/EyeTV MPEG Support, 0x0106): code signature in (/Library/QuickTime/EyeTV MPEG Support.component/Contents/MacOS/EyeTV MPEG Support) not valid for use in process: mapping process is a platform binary, but mapped file is not

I have to wait for the errors to finish running before the script actually runs, which is annoying.

I tried using codesign to fix the issue:

codesign --architecture x86_64 -f -s "My Cert" 'EyeTV MPEG Support'

But it didn't help. I believe the error is caused by Mojave's security policy.

One way to fix this is to remove the the QuickTime component from this folder. But I'm hoping there is a better fix as the EyeTV app requires this component to run.

Thanks.

I move it out into a new folder I created called ~/BadLibraries.
EyeTV still Works for me.


My own iPhone 7 is locked with foreign account after simple reset I have an issue with my iPhone 7 Plus, which today I wanted to replace with the XS.

After backing it up to a Macbook and then resetting the old phone, I logged in to the Apple ID site to remove the IPhone from my account. However, it wasn't there!
All of this took maybe 20 minutes.

Now I can neither restore the backup from the Macbook through iTunes, nor can I set up the old Iphone as a "new Iphone" anymore. Both attempts lead to a screen saying that the Iphone is locked to an account "n*****@icloud.com", which is not me! My account is "a**********@p*******.de"!

The SIM card is not locked in any way, I bought the phone without a cellular plan! The restore doesn't work with or without the SIM card.

I bought this iPhone brand new from a trusted retailer, and the iPhone has always ever only known my own Apple ID!

I cannot reset the iPhone through ITunes, or any other way.

How can this happen and what do I do? I fear I have to go to an Apple store and explain the dilemma. I do have the original receipts and can prove this is my phone that way, hopefully!

If you have all the original receipts required to prove ownership please go to the next Apple Store (or contact Apple support if there isn‘t a store close by). They should be able to reassign the phone.

PS: Make sure you make a fresh backup after your old phone is unlocked. Don‘t think there is a way to „unlock“ the existing backup.


iPhone possible hacking My young daughter tried to contact her friend via iMessage. Her friend's account is set up via her father's email address. My daughter later received unsavoury texts back. She deleted these straight away as there were swear words and she felt guilty about them.

One message remained on the iPod. It came from the father's email address, he claims that there must be a crossed line or his iPhone has been hacked.

Is either of this possible?

Iphone, was not hacked. wasn't crossed. Husband was arrested and admitted to charges.

Thanks for help, it confirmed that the device was probably not compromised.


Can't start mac because startup disk is missing First off, I apologize if this is kind of jumbled. I am just extremely stressed because of this.
Long story short, i fell asleep with my mac playing Netflix. When I wake up i have to plug it in because it died and when i plugged it in, it would only load bootcamp. I go to select the startup disk and Macintosh HD is gone. Any ideas on how to fix this?

It is important that I recover my data. I have an old time machine backup if that would help in any way. Is there a way to use it or an external drive to somehow get the files if they still exist?

Partial answer: boot into recovery mode and open disk utility.  If the SSD is visible, do “first aid.”
What to do next depends on what you see in Disk Utility.


Enhancement for switching inside a program on OS X Is there any software or tool that can give ⌘+` a visual interface just like ⌘+tab does?

You can set keyboard shortcuts for this (and more) in Preferences / Mission Control / Application windows.

control⬇ works for me in Lion but I'm not sure it's the default.


Mid 2009 MacBook pro cannot download osx I have a mid-2009 MacBook pro in which I replaced the
HD with SSHD a few years ago. It was updated to El
Capitan and runs fine. Now I want to get it ready to sell. I have successfully erased the SSHD but cannot get OS X of any version to download.  I have tried the original OS X CD, snow leopard
CD, internet downloads, all to no success.  When running from the disk drive it will start through the process and stall out.  Via internet it also starts through the process and stops, I get a message that it could not be installed and "no packages are eligible for install" I can restore it via time machine and have done so and restarted the process per Apple instructions but cannot get it to work. Help.

As you have the Snow Leopard disk, you can use another mac with an optical drive to create a bootable USB installer by following the answer to this question How to create a bootable OS X Snow Leopard USB drive? and using the Snow Leopard install disc instead of the iso file that is mentioned in the answer.
If you don't have another mac with an optical drive, you can either use the Snow Leopard install disc in a PC with optical drive to create an iso image, or download an existing iso image by following this answer: macOS won't boot into Recovery mode, need to reset admin password, and use it in the process outlined in the answer linked in the first paragraph to create a bootable USB installer.
Plug the bootable USB media into the 2009 Mac, reboot it while holding down the option key and select the USB device.


What advantages are there to removing a stolen device from your iCloud account? Apple's stolen iPhone advice lists the final step - after having erased the device - as:

Remove your lost or stolen device from your list of trusted devices.

However, it is clear from the "If the previous owner isn't with you" section of How to remove Activation Lock that this will remove the lock and allow the thief to use/sell the phone. This has been discussed previously and it also seems clear that the erased and logged-out device will not pose a security risk to your account. It thus seems like terrible advice. Furthermore, it is not hard to find examples of people removing their device too soon (such as before it has been erased).
I can only see this step as adding value to thieves. It would surely be better to instead provide additional warnings when removing a device of what the consequences are for Find My and activation lock etc. Why would Apple possibly advise this? Are there any advantages to doing it?

Once you reach step 6 you are in effect abandoning the device.
Some company phones are considered less valuable than the data they contain. Stripping the last remaining link to the previous user is therefore considered a better option.


Should I register my new Apple products with Apple? Apple asks to register products in the installation but I am unsure whether this is a good decision. If I sell the Apple -products later, does it cause some problems? What is the point of registration?

Once you've completed the registration, all the information you've filled up, will be sent to Apple with your iDevice / Computer's Serial Number.

Having an Apple Id associated to a Device is necessary for the AppleCare Protection Plan, but, if you purchased the AppleCare at the same time as your Device / Computer, the Protection Plan will be automatically registered, being unnecessary for you to do so.

The information you fulfill and submit is useful in other ways, using Autofill in Safari, for instance, or enable the possibilty of using the Remind me of-doing-something when I get Home of the iPhone 4S.

Therefore, if you want to sell your Mac or iDevice, you could just make a clean install to get rid of all that info. Not deleting it will just cause privacy / security issues.


Can't delete 'cloud calendar' from my iPhone I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.1.2 and I cannot delete a cloud calendar.  When I edit and go to the calendar all I get is the name of the calendar and the color that represents it.  No delete button at the bottom.  In fact, nothing below the colors.  Has anyone had this issue and are there any solutions short of a reset?

Subscribed Calendar can't be deleted directly from the Calendar app.

Go to Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars and you can unsubscribe from it.

Sometimes subscribed calendars on OS X can't be deleted on iOS.


Wine issue: Can't quit out of application I tried running a windows game called KouKou Gurashi lately on my MacBook Air by going into 'Advanced' and putting the KouKou Gurashi.exe in. It worked, I started running it but it froze and now I can't quit it. I deleted WineBottler thinking that would work but it didn't. I tried deleting Wine, but it won't let me delete it. I'm in need of help, and it won't let me shut down my mac.

If you've tried using Command Option esc and you're still facing that problem, you can try force shut down by pressing down the power button until the system shuts down. Make sure you have nothing important open or any unsaved work before doing that.


App Rejected 3 Times, clueless how to fix issue so an App of mine has been rejected 3 times.  Each being the same reason:
Guideline 2.2: Apps that exhibit bugs will be rejected

More specifically the App Reviewer(s) cannot log into the Application Server, which is needed to proceed.

The problem here is that I can not for the life of me figure out why they can't login.  The App has been tested thoroughly around the World from various testers, in the States (N.Y and California) as well as in India and Australia.

Everyone can login but the Apple Review team just can't.  I asked them to test on actual physical devices for the last submission since I believe they are using their own test suite when reviewing Apps.  Not sure if they did though.

How should I proceed with this?  I'm out of ideas.

If Apple reject your app due to a technical problem, they usually provide a screenshot. Check the bottom of the message in iTunes Connect to see if there is an attachment.

You could try some severe logging: in the app, log exactly what is happening, all the inputs, all the errors, and have it report to your server. Thus, after they reject the app, you can go through the logs and see what is happening.


Open MPI broken after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.14.6 After upgrading to 10.14.6, openmpi no longer works on my MacBook Air (2019). Attempting to run any related commands mpicxx or mpiexec produce the error

    dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/libevent/lib/libevent-2.1.6.dylib

I reinstalled the latest versions of openmpi (4.0.1) and libevent (2.1.11) (this wasn't necessary in the previous openmpi installation, but  openmpi could not make without it). However, even though the installation of openmpi was successful, it still seems to be still corrupted and fails with the same error as above when running mpiexec.

Any ideas what is causing this, or how to get this working again?

Open MPI 4.0.3 is now available from homebrew. brew upgrade openmpi will solve the problem.


Will my MacBook Air 6,1 support MST (Multi-Stream Transport)? I have an 11-inch, Mid 2013 MacBook Air. I'm wondering if I can hook up two Dell U2417H monitors using the DP out port on the monitor. So DP from MBA to first Dell U2417H. Then DP to DP from first U2417H to second U2417H. Is this possible? The display is not 4k.

Edit: I realize this question might have been asked, but the one I have found is asking about 4k.

Your MacBook Air's hardware: Yes.
MacOS (as tested with macOS Sierra 10.12.6): No.

I've tested it myself with an older MST capable Dell monitor and found various forum entries about this topic. No chance with macOS.
The Intel HD5000 graphics chip on your Macbook is capable to do MST with DP 1.2.

MacOS does not have any MST support built in. There is a 1% chance it will work with High Sierra 10.13 (if somebody can test this?!) but I really doubt it because Apple does not care about daisy chaining with MST when they have their Thunderbolt ports (which require a Thunderbolt monitor).

Only way to get MST working may be using a native Windows installation with Bootcamp on your Macbook.


Is Mac-book Pro Mid 2015 up-gradable? Does the newest model of Mac-book pro 15 inch 256 GB (mid 2015)
support Samsung's 950 pro NVM-E M.2 storage (512 GB)?
Will it also improve  sequential Read & Write speed of the system as
the later form of storage is NVM-Express ?

NOTE: I tried to look it up over google & SE but I couldn't find any mention of MBP Mid 2015.

No. Apple uses special blade SSDs. There are some aftermarket blades made/sold by manufacturers such as OWC. Please pay attention to get the correct blade. They differ from the blades for the MBP 2012.


Problems using my Airport Extreme Base Station with an external HD as an iTunes library I have my entire music collection on an external HD which I connect to my network through a direct USB connection with my Apple base station. I'm finding that iTunes struggles to load the library (43,000 files - some of which are hour long podcasts/mixes etc) and I've also purchased TuneUp to tidy up my music collection, but given that iTunes struggles to load in the first place, this avenue isn't even worth considering right now.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I might improve the setup? What connection between the base station and the external HD would give the best result?

It isn't practical to connect the drive directly to my PC as I'm using a laptop for my main machine, plus I'd like for the setup to work when I'm not at home so my partner can use her iPad or iPhone to browse/play the music.

UPDATE: The iTunes Library is on my machine running Windows 7 as opposed to on the external HD.

You've done the most important optimization available by placing the database files (the iTunes library  files) on the local drive. If you had that on slow storage (and Airport Extreme is in the slow category as far as network storage) then I could see you having slow launch times.

Even a library with 70,000 items stored in it should only have an iTunes Music Library.xml file that takes about 120 MB of space which should load in less than 10 seconds unless your PC is really bogged down with other tasks on the CPU.

The actual size of all the media doesn't affect the application launch time as it only has to parse the library files and not check each and every file before you can start using the program.

I would look at tuning up the PC or speeding up the filesystem where the library files are and see if that results in better app performance.


How can I apply tags in Mavericks recursively? Now that Mavericks removed that ugly colored bar and replaced it with a nice looking dot, I would like to use tags more.

Basically I have work files in different places that deal with different projects and I would like to apply the tag for all the files included in specific folders. The files may move around into new folders (outside of the original folder) in the future so I would like to apply a tag recursively to a folder so that I can find it easier if it gets moved out of its folder.

There's a CLI tag tool available via Macports/Homebrew: https://github.com/jdberry/tag

It doesn't seem to have a recursion option, however, I would imagine you could use this in conjunction with the standard UNIX 'find'.

e.g.,
(from inside the directory you want to tag files in)

find . -exec tag --add tagname {} \;  -print


limited "where" options when saving Word document using OSX El Capitan Currently using OSX version 10.11.3.  Prior to downloading El Capitan I had all the options that I'd see on the  Finder side bar when I wanted to save a document. see screen shot:  and I could drill into sub folders which allowed me to be very specific to where I saved documents.  I now have a very limited number of options and I cant drill into sub folders see screen shot:.

I'd love if someone had a solution.  I went into controll panel but nothing stood out to correct it.

Click the little down arrow next to the 'Save As' field. That will expand your options to show the Finder-like interface and expose extra controls like the checkbox that allows you to suppress hiding the file extension.


iPhone 4s is not responding at all I have an iPhone 4s, and at the moment, my phone is going through alot of issues. I haven't been able to charge my phone, due to the phone not responding or not reacting to the cable. My phone also will not turn on or attempt to charge. The Battery sign comes up but not the charging sign. Is it a battery problem?

It could be the battery.  The phone is 3-4 years old.  However it could also be the charging cable or the port.  The battery symbol with a sliver of red just means the battery has no charge.

If you can, try using other charging cables to see if those are more successful in charging the phone.

If different cables don't work, then try cleaning the contacts in the charging port.  Those can get dirty or corrode over time.  Try some of the tips here to clean the port: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-a-toothpick-to-clean-out-your-iphone/

If none of those work, you should look to try to replace the battery.  Apple can do this and there are 3rd party services like iFix that will charge $40 or so to replace the battery.


Using an Apple Display Connector monitor with a MacBook Pro My girlfriend just got her bosses old PowerMac G4 and big ol' Cinema Display. It's got the ADC connector, so I'm not sure if it's relevant what the size is (and frankly I'm too lazy to measure unless it is). I'm looking to drive this off of my MacBook Pro, and her MacBook, both using Mini DisplayPort.

It looks like the prescribed solution is to daisy-chain the Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter with a DVI to ADC adapter, but there's two issues with this:
1) It costs $130. Ouch.
2) The DVI to ADC adapter looks discontinued on the US store.

Is anyone familiar with a cheaper solution that doesn't involve ordering an adapter from the UK?

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/M8661B/B
DVI to ADC adapter, UK store, £70.46

Thanks in advance for any information.

(Apparently my StackOverflow reputation doesn't cross over so I can only post one link until I get 10 reputation, so I elected to post the harder to find one. Googling for "apple mini displayport to dvi adapter" will find you the other one.)

Either get one from ebay as (Mike Scott suggested) or Google for a DVI to ADC adaptor. The looking I did suggests that the UK one may actually be the cheapest.

The reason they are so expensive is that ADC carries the DVI connection, USB, and the monitor's power. (That's right: no separate power cord.) Any DVI to ADC adapter you get will, at a minimum, have to plug into your mini DisplayPort adapter and into the wall. Here's Apple's compatibility matrix, but their store links no longer work.

Good luck!


Does purchase from Amazon.in void Apple warranty? I want to purchase a Mac Mini from amazon.in not amazon.com; local apple store told me that if you purchase apple product from unauthorized reseller they will not provide me any support.

I searched for authorized apple resellers and I found amazon.com listed there, but did not find amazon.in.

My question is if I purchase Mac Mini from amazon.in will Apple be providing me warranty cover and support for next one year from the date of purchase? Is my local apple store is playing trick so that I buy from there?

Amazon.in, Amazon.com that's the same, so it won't void anything.

Amazon.in is targeted just for indian customers.


Using ACL to allow users to add files but not subdirectories in a folder I am on Mac OS Lion and wants to prevent users from creating sub directories inside a folder but at the same time users should be able to add files to the same directory

The following command does not allow user to add files to the folder

chmod +a "user allow add_file" test

What should I do to allow users to add files and not sub directories?

here are links to
Screen Shot 1
Screen Shot 2

EDIT: The following is a partial solution. It will work at the shell level as expected but in Finder it can be bypassed with the if user is admin or knows the a admin user id & password. See comments below...

Check the man page on chmod and you will find...

 The following permissions are applicable to directories:
       list    List entries.
       search  Look up files by name.
       add_file
               Add a file.
       add_subdirectory
               Add a subdirectory.
       delete_child
               Delete a contained object.  See the file delete permission
               above.

So the command you are looking for is...

$ chmod +a "staff deny add_subdirectory" test

to forbid anyone in group staff from creating sub folder and then testing should give you

$ mkdir test/subtest
mkdir: test/subtest: Permission denied

Where as creating a file...

$ touch test/blah.txt
$

is no problem. You should also find that Finder will have the Create Folder option disabled as well.

HTH


Can't install OS X on blank HDD on a Macbook Pro 2010 13" - Stuck on white screen I have a 2010 MacBook Pro lying around that I wanted to revive.

The problem is that I've lost the original DVDs. The original HDD is now blank and this version doesn't boot via USB.

I tried using a 2008 MacBook Pro DVD but it booted to the white screen and now it won't eject it. Boot shortcut keys (Opt ⌥+R etc.) won't work either.

How can I proceed on this?

I have a HDD caddy, which is the DVD replacement, at my disposal if that helps.

That Mac to be able to use Internet Recovery. Hold  Cmd ⌘    Opt ⌥   R  at the chimes

No Mac can boot to an OS older than itself.


Found a strange group on my Mac When I get information on various items such as System Preferences or a specific utility such as Script Editor, I can see that there is a group user called "wheel" that I can not eliminate.  This user group user has both Read and Write permissions to these applications and when I try to eliminate them (when logged in as an one of the users as Administrator), I get a message that indicates that I do not have sufficient permissions to do so.  I have found this group user on both my desktop and my laptop.  Any ideas.

That's perfectly normal. The wheel group is a default group and basically means the group of people who are allowed to use sudo or su to become root.


Dell Color Laser 1320c with Mac OS 10.15 Catalina and Network printing I updated to Catalina last year. I have several issues in my networking ecosystem at home including printing to my Dell 1320c printer

Basically I used my printer as a network printer, attached to the network via Ethernet cable. So I tried workarounds to circumvent the need for a missing Dell 64-Bit Driver.

I also read this thread and reinstalled my printer with the Xerox driver. The "Filter failed" issue is gone now but another issue popped up.

The Print job is starting but showing the message "printing - connecting to printer" and after a bit of time "the printer is unreachable at this time" or "printer may not exist or is unavailable at this time".

I was also looking for compatible 64-Bit open source drivers but did not find any.

Does anybody have another idea what else could fix this issue?

Unfortunately, you're out of luck.

The problem with these low cost, entry level printers is that they use the host (the computer driving the printer) to supply the engine for it.

According to the specs (available as a PDF), the Printer Language is "host based."  So, it's significantly more than a driver or a CUPS PPD file - it's actual software driving it.  Because this software is (most likely) 32bit, there's no chance it's going to run on Catalina.

So, your options are limited:

Set up a small, cheap computer (like a PC running Windows 7 or 10) or even a Mac mini running Mojave or earlier and share the printer over the network - basically make a home grown print server.
Downgrade to Mojave
Buy a new printer (if you go this route, don't get another host based (usually consumer grade) model.  Get one that a corporation would buy.  Yes they cost more, but you won't run into these issues (I've got a Lexmark that 15 years old still running with zero issues).


Stuck after reset all settings + Home button doesn't work Thanks for reading. I'm in a bit of a pickle here. I have a jailbroken iPhone 6 on 9.3.3 that is stuck at the Apple Logo with the progress bar below it at about 5%. On top of this problem, my home button is out of commission due to a faulty repair by yours truly. That means a hard reset is out of the question. Here's what I've tried:
Letting the battery die- First shows Apple logo and then shows bar and just loads up to 5% again and stops.
Connecting to iTunes- Doesn't recognize my phone (although it does recognize other phones)
Holding volume up when booting after letting the battery die- Just doesn't work
Any help is appreciated. I really need my Phone back.

Not sure if this will work.. but you can try to google a program that is made to put iPhone in recovery mode. Then you could restore it with iTunes. There's many programs out there but I'm not sure it would work if iTunes won't even recognize it. Best bet is to get that home button working some how.


Allow users to update certain applications I am the admin for my company's Mac users. Apps that I initially installed, such as Adobe apps, MS Office, Firefox, etc., all require an admin password to install updates.  In order to avoid the snide comments from users about their lack of admin rights I'm looking for a way to allow users to update certain apps without requiring an admin password.

Is there a way to do this without giving the user full admin rights?  Giving admin rights to the actual application might be one way, but some apps install components in other restricted locations.

We do this by using a management framework that basically has a sudo functionality that's controlled and logged centrally. If you don't want to create your own management framework, look for something like JAMF Software's Casper suite or an open-source framework like munki to manage patches and application installs. I don't know if munki handles the admin/standard user issue, but it's a place to start if you have no budget but can spend time learning if a tool might help you.

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/casper-suite/macosx/patch-management/

The Casper self-service portal idea allows normal users to pick from items that you have allowed self-updating and self-patching without needing any user on the receiving end of the patch/update to be an admin user.


Delete Keystroke from AppleScript Context
In Safari, there is a text field, in which, contains name of an image with extension .png, and I have to remove that extension.
Solution
Write a script, in which, simulate Delete(⌫) key 4 times, if preceding characters are .png, thereby removing the extension.
Problem
Here it says that should be done with key code 51 but that doesn't seem work. A Google search came up with other key codes such as 127.
Things to Fix my solution
What is the correct Key Code? Is there a way to find it out yourself like Accessibility Inspector for buttons, fields etc. I tried recording, doesn't work? Does Apple have a official list a of Key Codes?
For those interested, below is the script, nothing fancy:
# Checks and remove .png if exists

tell application "System Events"
    set oldClipboard to the clipboard

    repeat 4 times
        key code 123 using {shift down}  # Left Arrow key. Selects last 4 chars
    end repeat
    keystroke "c" using {command down}

    set newClipboard to the clipboard as text
    if newClipboard is equal to ".png" then
        #keystroke (ASCII character 127) # Other "code", doesn't work
        key code 51
        delay 0.1
    end if

    key code 124                         # Right Arrow key, works
    set the clipboard to oldClipboard
end tell

Your script works fine in most apps. Can easily test it in TextEdit to see that. When I said add in dialog boxes to text the flow, mostly what you need to test is that the "if newClipboard is equal to ".png" is getting triggered (not if the text is getting selected.
I would guess that your problem is that in a web form box (which I think you were describing), javascript is slowing down the text response including the copying to clipboard. It is a VERY common problem when scripting copying to clipboard that you need to add a delay after copying in order for the process to complete before the script proceeds. Try this, which simply adds the delay:

tell application "Safari" to activate
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    set oldClipboard to the clipboard
    repeat 4 times
        key code 123 using {shift down} # Left Arrow key. Selects last 4 chars
    end repeat
    delay .5
    keystroke "c" using {command down}
    delay 2
    set newClipboard to the clipboard as text
    -- display dialog newClipboard
    if newClipboard is equal to ".png" then
        #keystroke # WORKS!!!!!!!!
        key code 51
        delay 0.1
    end if

    key code 124 # Right Arrow key, works
    set the clipboard to oldClipboard
end tell


XCode 4.5 downloading documentation I have installed XCode 4.5. During the installation there was an error about downloading the documentation. I did not pay much attention, but I think the error was same as that mentioned in:
this question.

I tried the solution as mentioned in the post, but there is no file named as: "com.apple.adc.documentation.AppleOSX10_8.CoreReference.docset" as stated in the answer.

The main problem I have with the documentation is that it is incomplete. While some of the pages are displayed properly, the other pages are blank.

How do I repair the documentation? I am ready to re-download the documentation. I do NOT want to download the entire XCode 4.5 again. Please help!!!

Note: I am using Mountain Lion 10.8.

You can do that directly form Xcode preferences:

Open Xcode
Menu Xcode > Preferences
Go to the tab Download
Go to the sub-tab Documentation
Select the documentation you want to re-install
Click the - icon below the documentations list for moving it to the trash.
Click install on the desired documentation

Maybe you can skip the step 6 if Xcode shows that the documentation is not installed.


How can I use Regular Expressions in Spotlight on Mountain Lion? How can I use Regular Expressions in Spotlight on Mountain Lion?

I want to use my knowledge of regular expressions to make my search results more exact.

Apple's tools for accessing the Spotlight index (Spotlight itself and the mdfind command) don't offer any regex options, nor do I know of any 3rd party tools that offer that (I'm not actually sure Apple has APIs that would make that possible).

However, the mdfind command does offer a much more powerful interface than the GUI Spotlight search. It offers proper binary operators and finer grained control over what metadata you search. Check out The Power of mdfind (via archive.org) for some good information, as well as the mdfind man page.


How can I automatically download multiple sites through Coda? I have several sites in Coda that I would like to automatically re-download when I tell it to. The sites are collaboratively managed, and I'd like to download a fresh copy of the sites automatically. I am open to AppleScripting, an Automator workflow, a shell script, a combination of all three, or anything else you suggest. How would I go about doing this?

Edit: Can I write a shell script to download the whole site via FTP, then copy it to my "Sites" folder and overwrite the existing data? I need to be able to do it for more than one site, so I need a way to pass in the domain name, user, password, and the directory I want it to copy to.

You could easily use wget for this and script it any which way you like. Here's a quick example of how you could use it to download and overwrite one of your sites in one line:

wget ~/Sites/domain/ ftp://[username]:[password]@ftp.example.com/www/

So to do multiple websites you would use:

wget -P ~/Sites/ -i sites.txt

And your text file might look something like this:

ftp://username:password@ftp.site1.com/www/
ftp://username:password@ftp.site2.com/www/
ftp://username:password@ftp.site3.com/www/

From the wget man page:

Recursive download:
  -r,  --recursive          specify recursive download.
  -l,  --level=NUMBER       maximum recursion depth (inf or 0 for infinite).
       --delete-after       delete files locally after downloading them.
  -k,  --convert-links      make links in downloaded HTML or CSS point to
                            local files.
  -K,  --backup-converted   before converting file X, back up as X.orig.
  -m,  --mirror             shortcut for -N -r -l inf --no-remove-listing.
  -p,  --page-requisites    get all images, etc. needed to display HTML page.
       --strict-comments    turn on strict (SGML) handling of HTML comments.

Recursive accept/reject:
  -A,  --accept=LIST               comma-separated list of accepted extensions.
  -R,  --reject=LIST               comma-separated list of rejected extensions.
  -D,  --domains=LIST              comma-separated list of accepted domains.
       --exclude-domains=LIST      comma-separated list of rejected domains.
       --follow-ftp                follow FTP links from HTML documents.
       --follow-tags=LIST          comma-separated list of followed HTML tags.
       --ignore-tags=LIST          comma-separated list of ignored HTML tags.
  -H,  --span-hosts                go to foreign hosts when recursive.
  -L,  --relative                  follow relative links only.
  -I,  --include-directories=LIST  list of allowed directories.
  --trust-server-names             use the name specified by the redirection
                                   url last component.
  -X,  --exclude-directories=LIST  list of excluded directories.
  -np, --no-parent                 don't ascend to the parent directory.


MacBook Pro not booting I have a mid 2010 MacBook Pro that won't boot up. Faced this problem quite a while ago, so i sent it in for repair and was told the logic board may need replacement. The store told me they tested my machine out with a working logic board and replacing it would solve the issue.

I decided not to get it fixed and took it home.

Strangely enough, I was able to boot up after I left the store. There was around 20% charge on it too, seemed to work fine. I was not able to get the battery to charge though, MagSafe light would remain green. Eventually the battery drained since it couldn't charge.

I even replaced the MagSafe DC-in board myself later but it doesn't charge no matter what, light remains green.

My question is, if my logic board was truly faulty, would it have been possible to boot up when I got it back from the store?

Edit: I have tried the following:

Asking a friend of mine to verify if my MagSafe adaptor works and was told there was no issue with charging.
Disconnecting the battery and plugging in the MagSafe adaptor to boot up, which didn't work.

My question is, if my logic board was truly faulty, would it have been
  possible to boot up when I got it back from the store?

Because, not everything is absolute.

In other words, you may have an intermittent failure of some component.  I't possible it's a failing capacitor, resistor or even IC (Integrated Circuit, aka "chip").   There may be dry (broken or otherwise faulty) solder joints.  You may even have electrical "glue" that has become dry/cracked and is contributing to the intermittent functionality.

Without putting "hands on" it would be impossible to accurately diagnose and/or repair.  However, IMO, unless you can source a replacement logic board on the cheap, fixing an almost 9 year old machine is going to be cost prohibitive.


How can I software disable a display? I have a mac mini with two monitors but I often access it remotely over VNC. Screen Sharing (and other vnc clients) allow me to select a single display (or view both at once), but neither work well because if I view a single screen then windows will open on the other one, alerts will pop up, etc. It's also basically impossible to use with both displays shown at once on a 13in laptop screen.
I'm looking for a way to software disable one of the monitors so that I can switch to a single display when I need to.

I finally found a solution: the open source project DisableMonitor 3.1 let's you easily disable, enable or change the resolution of all monitors attached to your Mac. It supports macOS 10.15 Catalina and Big Sur (Intel) 11.1.
DisableMonitor 3.1 is a fork of the original project DisableMonitor, which is no longer maintained.


How to display zero value as blank cell in mac numbers 3.1 How do I display zero value as blank cell in mac numbers 3.1 yet maintain a formula.  I want a running balance column that only shows balance to the line of the last entry like a checkbook register.
Thanks.

The easiest way is to use "Conditional Highlighting..." found under the "Format" menu.

Select the cell you want to have blank as zero then select "Conditional Highlighting" you then set a highlight when the cell is equal to zero. Choose  "Custom Highlighting" at the bottom of the style list and then you can set the text colour to white. A "blank" cell on zero.


Can I access a secondary hard drive on another computer via AFP I am on machine LOC. I would like to connect to a directory on the second hard drive of machine REM. Both machines are running Lion 10.7.1. I use Finder on LOC and Command-K to connect to a server. I type in afp://192.168.1.3 (IP Address of REM) and authenticate as a user on REM with Admin priveleges. I am presented with an option to connect to any of several different folders, all of which reside on REM's primary (boot) hard drive. I would like to connect to a folder which resides on a second internal drive in REM, but I am not given this option. The folder on the second hard drive is owned by the Admin user I am connect to REM as, and has 755 permissions. I have created a symlink on REM under the home directory of the user I authenticate as. When I am logged in to REM locally as that same user, clicking on the symlink takes me to the folder on the secondary drive.

How can I access this folder via AFP from another computer?

Yes.

Set up sharing on REM to share the root directory of the second drive.

You can right click and do it from the Finder or go in and manage all shares from the sharing system preference.


How long would it take for FileVault to encrypt my Retina Macbook Pro? I have a Retina Macbook Pro with the following specifications :

Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.2
Processor  2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory  16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 - 500 GB Flash Storage
286.83 GB of  499.42 remaining

3.93 GB.... Audio
62.35 GB.. Movies
3.51 GB.... Photos
26.7 GB.... Apps
0 KB......... Backup
116.1 GB.. Other

How long will FileVault need to encrypt my system ?

The process to enable FileVault will read the entire 500 GB of data - whether the block is empty or full and encrypt it with the keys you set up as part of the process. So, the background IO will run the fastest if you don't have other user level disk IO running. The encryption itself will take less than 10% of one CPU on that powerful (fast) Mac - so you are really just going to see a sustained 60 to 80 MB/s re-write of the entire drive if you let the Mac sit idle. A Mac with a spinning hard drive would see between 20 to 30 MB/s so an Air or any Mac with solid state drives will be two to three times faster in this operation.

So - from the time you start, I would estimate 2-3 hours if you are getting at least 70 MB/s for writing the encrypted data back to the disk. This process does run in the background and isn't really reversible once it starts, so you can kick it off and then track the progress with diskutil.

  diskutil cs list


Installing Barrel caused an issue which doesn't go away I installed and ran Barrel 2 on my iPhone and set the new effect. I also needed to move a group of apps and made my icons toggle. Then all my apps stopped working. I uninstalled it but the issue still remains.

What should I do?

If rebooting the phone didn't work, a system refresh using iTunes will certainly fix the problem.

You can try installing and then uninstalling Barrel again, in case the uninstall or original install failed at some point.  This should clean it back up.  But if it doesn't, then a clean reinstall of iOS will do it.


Disable dual Graphic and use only Intel card My Mac Book Pro is now stuck after Apple logo screen on a grey screen and after hours of search I found the problem is in my graphic card (this issue happen after updating to High Sierra).

So  I need to disable the second VGA

I tried with

/sbin/fsck -fy /
/sbin/mount -uw /
mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
touch /System/Library/Extensions
exit

but I got an error :

operation not permitted

any idea to fix this or at least disable SIP ?

Notes

I am not able to boot to any GUI neither by safe mode boot nor verbose mode or even recovery mode,  so I need to do it via terminal

I am only able to boot via single user mode

The only way to disable SIP is to go in through the recovery partition and disable it from there, so unfortunately I don't think that will be an option for you with the current state of the machine.

I would take a look at the answer for this question here:
MacBook Pro How To Disable Discrete GPU Permanently from EFI

Booting into a different OS is probably going to be your best chance at success. Hope that helps!


Search for ALL large files and folders (not just some) using Finder (not third-party) I am looking for space! I would like to search for all large folders and files. I found this answer but so far my searches failed to show some of the large files, including a .pkg file that was in my home directory (the 'house' icon). I just use "normal" finder, and then with the controls - where I am trying to find a way to say size > 100MB or something to that effect. But I don't even see size.

I also can not see how to display all folders on my computer where again folder size > 100MB. Are these possible using the Finder controls?

edit: To address the comments I've added an additional example. It's the selective file type that's bothering me. Here I create some files with python and look with Finder. Finder decides that I should not know about two of the files because the "Kind" is "Document". If I display the folder, they are there, but Finder won't show them if I'm searching.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import json

y = [3,1,5,2,0]

np.save("TestDifferent", y)

with open("TestDifferent.json", "w") as outfile:
    json.dump(y, outfile)

with open("TestDifferent.txt", "w") as outfile:
    outfile.write(str(y))

with open("TestDifferent.weird", "w") as outfile:
    outfile.write(str(y))

plt.figure()
plt.plot(y)
plt.savefig("TestDifferent")
plt.show()

It's possible to search by size using Terminal (Confirmed working on Mojave).

No 3rd party tools or hacks.

Here is a command I used to look through and find largest folders taking my space away (run as root and the command to switch to root is: sudo -i):

du -k / | awk '$1 > 500000' | sort -nr

Once you get the list (ignore the 'Operation not permitted' since those are files you can't (shouldn't) mess with anyway) and look for the top ones.


Subscription management with iTunes id (restrict the user from creating multiple subscription on same iTunes ID) I am working on an Auto-renewable subscription based application. We are using In-App purchase (StoreKit) option for the payment.
I have 2 subscription plans.

Monthly subscription
Yearly subscription

At the time of registration, the user should purchase any of the subscriptions mentioned above.

The problem I am facing can be stated as follows:

-> The Apple device is logged in using an iTunes id itunesone@gmail.com

-> One user say, userone@gmail.com creates an account in my app, and purchase a monthly subscription plan.

-> Now the purchased subscription is associated with iTunes id itunesone@gmail.com

-> Now, suppose if a second user say, usertwo@gmail.com tries to create another account with the same iTunes id itunesone@gmail.com

-> My requirement is that I should not allow the user to create a second account with the same iTunes id. How can I accomplish this?

-> If I allow the user to proceed and if the user tries to buy the same Monthly plan, apple store will return something like You are already subscribed to this plan. But if the user tries to purchase the second plan, that is the Yearly plan, An upgrade will happen which will completely mess up my backend.

-> Is there any way to get some data which will uniquely represent each iTunes id? So, using this I can solve my issue. Or else what I can do to stop the user from creating another account when there is already a subscription exists with the same iTunes id?

Note: Restore purchase was one option(not a good option, still). But it will confuse the user when there is a fresh registration happens and I don't think that is a good approach.

The user's iTunes ID differs from their Apple ID.  It is easy to 'share' your iTunes ID but hard to share your Apple ID.

Your concern is a valid one but for a different reason.  No need to be concerned about two different users purchasing two different subscriptions.  But you could be concerned that two different users will share their iTunes ID and both benefit from a single purchase.

One approach is to forget about it; it's a theft but not necessarily a loss of a real sale.  Another approach is to associate each purchase with the user's Apple ID using their iCloud key-value file.  Use that key-value file to implement your own restoreCompletedTransactions.  Do not allow a repurchase for free.


Standard User account not getting removed on El capitan I am not able to delete user account on El capitan . The Minus (remove option ) is inactive here . I tried doing this by logging in to admin account .
Please help!!!!

Problem

It's possible that the user you're attempting to remove is the last FireVault capable account. You can see this illustrated by launching Directory Utility (/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Directory Utility.app) from the command line and attempting to remove the user:

From the command line, you should get something along these lines:

2017-11-06 16:08:03.777 Directory Utility[866:19875] Couldn't delete record "demouser" of type "dsRecTypeStandard:Users": Error Domain=com.apple.OpenDirectory Code=4001 "Attempting to delete the last FileVault capable user" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Attempting to delete the last FileVault capable user, NSLocalizedFailureReason=Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges.}

No matter how you launch Directory Utility or which permissions you use, you'll be unable to delete the user.

Solution

You'll need to enable FireVault if it isn't already and add the user you want to the list of users capable of unlocking the disk:

You can also use the command line: sudo fdesetup add -usertoadd username

After this is done, you'll be able to delete the user. You can also turn off FireVault if you feel like it.


TextEdit app always opens with File Open dialog Every time I open my TextEdit app it starts with the File Open dialog open.

How do I stop this?

I find this behaviour irritating too. I believe Mountain Lion introduced a new Open dialog to provide the option to save a new file in iCloud so that it’s available from other iOS devices. You can disable this feature by going to System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive Options then untick TextEdit.app and any other apps that have a similar behaviour.


Disk Utility First Aid error I got the following message when I try Disk Utility First Aid. Is there a way to fix the problem? (I have macOS 10.14.4.)

Running First Aid on “usbhd” (disk3s1)

Repairing file system.
Volume is already unmounted.
Performing fsck_hfs -fy -x /dev/rdisk3s1
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
The volume usbhd could not be verified completely.
File system check exit code is 8.
Restoring the original state found as unmounted.
File system verify or repair failed.

Operation failed…

See: File system check exit code is 8 on macOS


Hotkey to scroll other window without switching to it Emacs has a nice feature in the C-M-v keybind (scroll-other-window in Emacs Lisp), which causes the other window in a frame with two windows to scroll (I haven't tried it with more than two windows) without switching to the other window. Is there a way to get equivalent functionality with Mac OS X toplevel windows (i.e. non-Emacs windows)?

In particular I'm interested in scrolling Chrome and iTerm windows, but a more general solution would be great. I assume I would have to install a hotkey app of some sort, but I'm not averse to that.

I don't know any way to get the second frontmost application or window with AppleScript, apart from something like this:

delay 0.3 -- time to release modifier keys if the script is run with a shortcut
tell application "System Events"
    set p to process 1 where it is frontmost
    set visible of p to false
    delay 0.01
    key code 121 -- 121 = page down, 116 = page up
    set frontmost of p to true
end tell

It makes the hidden and activated windows flash though.

With browsers you could use window.scrollBy():

tell application "Safari" to tell document 1
    do JavaScript "window.scrollBy(0,(window.innerHeight-20))"
end tell

tell application "Google Chrome" to tell active tab of window 1
    execute javascript "window.scrollBy(0,(window.innerHeight-20))"
end tell

Another option would be to simulate pressing ⌃F4, page up or page down, and ⌃⇧F4 by for example using KeyRemap4MacBook:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, ModifierFlag::FN | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::F4, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L, KeyCode::PAGEUP, KeyCode::F4, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, ModifierFlag::FN | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::F4, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L, KeyCode::PAGEDOWN, KeyCode::F4, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>

It also causes a visual glitch, and ⌃F4 sometimes selects windows from hidden applications.


Can't force quit frozen iTunes in OS X Yosemite I have OS X Yosemite. Was adding a podcast to an older nano, and iTunes crashed. It's still running, but when I try it won't force quit. I tried to restart or shut down, but the system wants me to force quit Itunes, but it won't. Any suggestions?


Can you set up a table format on Pages documents from the beginning? I want to set up a Pages document with a specific format, a certain table with a certain number of cells on each page, of a certain size. Instead of just copying and pasting this table into multiple pages, is there a way I can set up the document in the settings so that it knows to automatically put such a table in every page?

Create a Pages document with the desired table (and any styles you want).

Then save as a template.

New documents created with the template should meet your needs.


External Flashdrive Won't Mount on Mac I formatted it as a boot drive, and it worked. But now, my Mac reads it as only being 2.4 MB rather than 124 GB, but it recognizes that the drive is 124 GB when trying to partition, although I can't partition, since the drive won't mount in the first place.

I put the flash drive in a computer running Windows 10. I discovered it had an EFI disk partition after seeing the EFI folder through File Explorer, and I realized that that was the thing that was not allowing the drive to work on my Mac. I was unable to delete that partition through Disk Management, since Disk Management won't allow you to modify or delete EFI disk partitions, so I had to use Diskpart. I right clicked the Command Prompt to run it as an administrator. Once it opened, I typed in diskpart, and hit enter. I looked over at the Disk Management tab to see which disk it was. I then typed in select disk 1, and hit enter. After that, I typed in list disk, and hit enter to make sure I selected the right disk, since there's an asterisk to the left of the selected disk. Once I saw I selected the correct disk, I typed in clear, and hit enter. It didn't work the first time, so I waited a minute, and typed in clear again, and it worked the second time. I then went into Disk Management, and initialized the drive as an exFAT drive, since NTFS doesn't work on Mac without some sort of special program. It now works perfectly fine on my Mac.


Are my wireless Microsoft mouse+keyboard supported in OSX? I have a MS Wireless Laser Mouse/Keyboard 5000 set where both connect to my Windows desktop using a special USB bluetooth receiver.

I'm not sure if this is generic USB technology that will work on my Mac Mini (2012), running OSX Yosemite - I am hoping to switch to that as my main device.

Can anyone tell me if it will/should work without problems?

Yeah, even Microsoft itself says it's compatible with OSX !


Getting notified when someone logs into a server using SSH or Remote Desktop I have a mac mini server running OS X Lion Server 10.7.3. It pretty much runs unattended without problems. However, the server is under constant "attack" according to the logs. The firewall and security is holding up it seems.

Is there any application/script that can send me an email whenever someone/anyone logs into the server using SSH, Admin Tools or ARD?

Since the machine runs unattended, headless in a datacenter in a different city, I'm concerned that someone may (through pure persistance) manages to crack a password or find a compromise on the system. Knowing I'll get alerted will put my mind to ease.

Your best defence is always to turn off unnecessary services. If you're not using remote desktop: turn it off. If you're not using the HTTP or FTP servers: turn them off. Fewer services running, fewer points of entry for possibly intruders to exploit.

Aside from locking it down, there are some free and open source products that are OS X friendly you can look at to do intrusion detection on your machine.

Snort

Though I haven't personally run it, I do have colleagues who know and trust it for intrusion detection. It's BSD-compatible so it makes a it a good fit for OS X. Another upside to going with Snort is it's available as a Homebrew package:

> brew info snort
snort 2.9.0.5
http://www.snort.org
Depends on: daq, libdnet, pcre
Not installed
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/snort.rb

==> Caveats
For snort to be functional, you need to update the permissions for /dev/bpf*
so that they can be read by non-root users.  This can be done manually using:
    sudo chmod 644 /dev/bpf*
or you could create a startup item to do this for you.

So you get a simplified path to installation and some trust in the fact that it ports well to OS X and runs there. With Homebrew installed you only need to do:

> brew install snort

And you're ready to get started with it.

Check out this Snort for OS X Lion Server setup guide that the Snort community provides to get started with rule writing for your OS X machine. That's a great document and, in addition to walking through installing Snort from source (which you don't need to do), it talks about all the things you should do your OS X Lion Server instance to help protect it. If you install via Homebrew, start at Section 5 (page 13) in the PDF since you don't need to worry about installing it from source code.

Tripwire

I've run Tripwire on linux machines to do rapid intrusion detection and alerting. It's effective but it's a bit of a beast to set up. It can perform actions when rules are matched against log files. Of course, a savvy hacker is going to know to disable Tripwire as soon as they break in so they don't end up with their session getting cut off.

The MacWorld hint talks about setting up Tripwire on OS X. It's not simple and the article ends with mentioning that it's not been tested.


What's the noticeable speed difference between these two Mac computers? Someone wants to trade his new iPhone 5, his 20" iMac, and some cash for my 15" Macbook Pro. Here are the specs for my MBP and his iMac:

My Early 2011 15in Macbook Pro

2.2GHz i7
4GB Ram
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
750GB HDD
1GB GDDR5 Graphics memory

Their mid 2007 20" iMac

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 duo
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB
4GB RAM 667 MHz DDR2

And it's other specs..

Will either machine be significantly/noticeably faster? Again, the comparison is on the basis of speed alone.

Having a look on everymac.com i see the following Geekbench measurements

MBP pro     32bit=9991/64bit=10823

Imac 2007   32bit=3216/64bit=3595

with this info i would say yes. by a whole lot..

I'm writing this info funnily enough on a 2007 imac 20 inch so i think its a good machine...and it still going strong but it has its limitations that become apparent as soon as you leave OSX 10.6 and go to 10.7 or 10.8...

So if you use your mac for lets say web browsing and light apps then it does its job... its memory limit is 6GB by the way...

But if you want to use it for music/video editing creating etc.. With current versions of suitable applications then i would say that would be a GREAT downgrade...

Also if its any help according to everymac.com:

MBP pro  estimated current price US$1200-US$1350

Imac2007 estimated current price US$750-US$850


Settings app badge stuck at 1 after update to iOS 8.0.2 I updated from iOS 8.0 to iOS 8.0.2 on my iPhone 6 last night and noticed after the update completed that the Settings app shows a badge on my home screen even though there is no apparent update available in the app (including an iOS software update - which shows iOS 8.0.2 is installed and is the latest version).

I saw a comment elsewhere (ios 8.0.1 - download completed but unable to install) implying this was seen with iOS 8.0.1 also and wondered if there is a way to reset the settings app badge or if this may be a bug that remains in iOS 8.0.2.

UPDATE: As an additional data point the count on the settings badge inexplicably went from 1 to 5 today. I have not done a DFU restore, and may eventually resort to that, but for now would rather not go through that process and am hopeful a different fix is possible.

I found a MacRumors thread complaining about the same thing, and more Google results about the same problem happening as far back as iOS 6.  It can apparently be fixed by a DFU restore, if you're willing to be that drastic.  Otherwise...wait for the next update.


Mute/unmute iPhone based on location or time My wife mutes her iPhone 5 at work because she has many landline phone meetings during the day and doesn't want the sound to play over her conference calls.  The problem is that she often doesn't unmute the phone when leaving work.  So, after leaving work, she will often miss calls or texts because she has muted the phone.

Is there any way to mute the phone on geographic location or time?  Ideally it would just mute within a mile of the office and unmute otherwise.  Alternatively, muting the phone 8-5 would work too, just as long as no action is needed to unmute.

Settings > Do Not Disturb has many options available, as explained at this page:

or Apple's brief explanation here:

  Do Not Disturb

  Do Not Disturb is an easy way to silence iPhone, whether you’re going
  to dinner or to sleep. It keeps calls and alerts from making any
  sounds or lighting up the screen.

  Turn on Do Not Disturb. Swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to
  open Control Center, then tap the do not disturb button. When Do Not
  Disturb is on, the do not disturb button appears in the status bar.

  Note: Alarms still sound, even when Do Not Disturb is on. To make sure
  iPhone stays silent, turn it off.

  Configure Do Not Disturb. Go to Settings > Do Not Disturb.

  You can schedule quiet hours, allow calls from your Favorites or
  groups of contacts, and allow repeated calls to ring through for those
  emergency situations. You can also set whether Do Not Disturb silences
  iPhone only when it’s locked, or even when it’s unlocked.

Its really quite handy, but what is lacking is the ability to schedule Do Not Disturb in the Calendar app for repeats and specific times of the day. That would be sweet.


How do I get the URL of a right-clicked link sent to an automator action? I'd like to create a service to open a link in Chrome. I already have this service installed: Safari Extension for right click menu: Open in Google Chrome?

This works if I right-click on selected text that is a URL. But it doesn't work if I right-click a link whose title is not a URL. For example, I'd like to right click a thread title at http://meh.com/forum and have have a command under Services to open that link in Chrome. The service referenced above doesn't show up in the Services contextual menu. Safari has a "Copy Link" menu item in the contextual menu. Is there a way to trigger that command from Automator or AppleScript?

Try this code on Automator action "Run Javascript".

for Chrome

function run(input, parameters) {

    var app = Application("Google Chrome");
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

    var url = app.windows[0].activeTab.execute({
        javascript: 'window.getSelection().anchorNode.parentNode.href'
    });

    return url;
}

for Safari

function run(input, parameters) {

    var app = Application("Safari");
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

    var url = app.doJavaScript('window.getSelection().anchorNode.parentNode.href',{
        in: app.windows[0].currentTab
    });

    return url;
}

For example

Right click on the link and select "Copy link to clipboard" service, then you can get the URL.


Date and Time only partially visible in Big Sur As you can see in the image above, the date and time are dimmer than normal.
How do I fix this?

Date and time is now also Notification Center 'icon'. If it is dimmed it means that you have 'Do Not Disturb' active. To toggle between on/off DND hold ⌥ key while clicking on date/time.
If you don't like dimming then you should head to Dock & Menu Bar in Preferences. On left pane select 'Do Not Disturb' and tick 'Show in menu bar' and select 'when active'. By doing this tilted half-moon icon will be displayed on Status menu if DND is active and date/time will not be dimmed.


How to deactivate the welcome screen in LibreOffice for Mac? LibreOffice for mac - by default - starts with a welcome screen. While this might be useful to some, it also results in resume not working in Lion (I assume). No previous documents are being opened. Can I deactivate this welcome screen?

Thank you for any help!

There is no known setting to disable this dialog.

The "welcome screen" serves as a dispatcher to the different parts of LibreOffice (such as the word processor or spreadsheet). Because these applications cannot be accessed directly (they lack stand-alone binaries), the welcome screen is in fact quite functional when not launching LibreOffice from an existing document. Disabling it would not make much sense from a useability point a view, therefore I am not really surprised there is no setting to change this behavior.


“macOS needs to repair your library” error loop on Mojave upgrade I’ve been having trouble fixing the “macOS needs to repair your library” loop for the past couple of days and I’m running out of options. The message pops up over and over again, no matter what I do.

I’ve gone as far as typing a command in Terminal (recovery mode) which Apple support sent me (the diskutil resetuserpermissions, except longer).

I found some other commands online but I’m not sure what they do and that’s why I haven’t tried them, can anybody help me?

Other commands I’ve found:
resetpassword (confused as to WHICH password it’ll reset)
and

sudo chown -R <user> ~/Library

sudo chgrp -R <groupname> ~/Library (found on this website)

This last one the user said I should get it by running id -u for user and id -g for groups, but as I am not the tiniest bit familiar with programming, I wonder if he meant I should replace “user” for id -u and same thing for groups??

Please help as I am desperate and Apple support’s solutions haven’t helped me so far!!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

That’s the link that should help. Worked for me.  I’d been frustrated by this problem for weeks.  Disk utility repair was not good enough.
But resetting user permissions as per above link did the trick.


Do iPhones sold in the US support dual physical SIMs? I saw this picture on Using Dual SIM with two nano-SIM cards, which suggests recent iPhone models may support two physical SIMs:

A friend allowed me to play with his new iPhone 12 (bought in the US), but I can't seem to be able to fit another nano SIM in the back of the tray.
Does the US iPhone have a smaller tray? Or is the form factor for iPhone 12 different depending on the market?

As it says right at the top of the support page you link to

In China mainland, Hong Kong, and Macao, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR feature Dual SIM with two nano-SIM cards

iPhone 12 models sold in the US support one hardware nano SIM and one software-based eSIM though.


Which Macbook Pro USB port should I use to charge an iPad? I heard that one of the two USB ports provides more power, decreasing the charging time.

Still, I forgot which one is the powerful one. I would be nice to give a hint that's easy to rememeber ;)

It is does matter, this is a MBP from Early 2011, not one of the new 2012 series which has a very powerful charging port.

Update! I checked using System Report (you need to restart it after you plug/unplug iPad as it does not refresh itself).

So far there is no difference on my MBP, it it provides is 500 mA which is quite low.

Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA):  500
Extra Operating Current (mA):   1600

You can use either port, the limitation is that only one USB port can provide this higher power level. If you try and charge two iPads at the same time, only one will get provided with the higher power level, and the decision as to which is made on a first-come-first-served basis.

Edit to Add: I forgot to mention that the article says Macs with more than two USB ports may be capable of powering multiple ports (but not necessarily all) at this higher power level. Unfortunately they don't give any further details.

Source


Problem when booting OS X from an external USB drive I would like to create a Fusion Drive from my SSD and HDD both installed inside my MacBook Pro 15" Mid 2012. I've read an article online which said that in order to do that, I'd need to boot Mavericks from an external USB drive. So I've picked a 64 GB USB stick and partitioned it in two, 8 GB for the installer and the rest for the operating system to install to. I've managed to create the USB installer of Mavericks using Unibeast, the installer boots without any problem, it installs normally but when I reboot I get a stop sign with a spinning wheel under it. How can I solve this problem?

The tutorial I'm trying to follow to create the Fusion drive is this one: Manually Create an Apple Fusion Drive on Mountain Lion/Mavericks/Yosemite

I need to create a Fusion drive from the 2 internal drives (240GB SSD and 1TB HDD). On the SSD I already have installed El Capitain and I used the HDD to store files. Now I've seen that you can merge this two in a single LogicalVolume and OS X will see it as if it were a Fusion Drive.

You do not need Unibeast (a tool for hackintoshes) to create an external installer. Can you confirm you're only using it to run the createinstallmedia command provided by apple as per this page?

Apart from that it seems you are confusing an external Mavericks installation with an external Mavericks installer. All you should have to do is double click the installer, straight from the App Store still laying in /Applications on your internal drive, then pick the external volume as a target (wipe the current ones and make a new one for the entire stick). Using all-apple tools should make that go smooth.

Then just boot from the external stick by holding down opt at boot, and complete the guide.

When in doubt or in need in help, always boot in verbose mode to get more information, and above all, do not over complicate things.


Altering a hard linked file in one location seems to destroy it in another location I have a file, myfile.txt, located in folder1. From the terminal I create a hard link to this file in another directory with the command

ln myfile.txt ~/Documents/folder2

The new file appears as expected in folder2. When I examine the inode for each file using ls -i, it gives the same number, as expected. However, if I open the file and modify it in folder1, after saving, if I open the file from folder2 it has no data. Investigating the inode numbers with ls -i, the two files now have different inode numbers. So my question is, why is this happening? Is this the behavior I should be expecting? My understanding was that hard links were truly indistinguishable files, merely alternate names for the same data. Thus I would expect that altering the file after opening in one location wouldn't be any different than had I opened it from the other location. Can anyone explain what is going on here?

In event that it matters, I'm using Mavericks and the default terminal.app.

Some additional information. The described behavior happened when the file was edited with either TeXShop or TextEdit, so I thought it was something at the OS level. However it appears to not happen when I edit the file with Aquamacs.

A friend of mine found the answer for me. Apparently OS X has a function writeToFile:atomically, which causes a copy of the edited file to be made, then, on saving, replacing the original file with the copy. Since the copy exists in a different place in the hard disk, it has a different inode number. So after the save, the opened file points to a new location and the data at the original inode is removed. This causes the other copy of the file to now point to nothing at the original inode location.


MacOS-Big Sur VirtualBox Error the virtual machine has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1) This happens after updating into the MacOS Bug sur. And then trying to start the VirtualBox VMs,
Tried so far and no luck with below options,

Un-installed and re-installed the VirtualBox
Created completely new VM and tried
Re-installed Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.16

Anyone else came a cross with the same issue? any clue to resolve this would really appreciated.
This the the complete Error message

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine New Ubuntu.

The virtual machine 'New Ubuntu' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: MachineWrap

This worked for me
sudo su
csrutil clear
reboot

Then uninstall (from the official uninstaller) and re-install VirtualBox
If prompted, go to System Preferences - Privacy - General and accept the extensions
Reboot


How to copy SMS messages from a Nokia phone (or Nokia PC Suite backup) to iPhone? What if I have a Nokia PC Suite backuped file which contains all the SMS and want to copy them to the new iPhone?

Please check iNoki at: http://www.nokisoft.com/inoki. It's an iPhone app which can extract and import data in .NBU file created by Nokia PC Suite. All phonebook, sms, calendar, photo, audio, videos can be imported.

AppStore link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inoki/id438619967?ls=1&mt=8

SMS is viewable in iNoki instead of native SMS app - for apple has no official API to insert into native SMS db.


Suggest a Mac Notifications app with cloud sync to an accompanying iPhone app? I'm looking for an app in which I can write down a quick message for myself on the Mac that can later pop up on my iPhone and remind me via a push notification.

I'm not looking for a full-featured task manager.  I know I could do this with iCal, but it's overkill for what I'm looking for. iCal is closer in nature to full featured task management apps than I'd like.

I know about two options that fit quite precisely what I'm after:

http://www.NotifyMeCloud.com/
This looks solid. And pretty. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but the fact that the last update to the app occurred June 23rd 2011 gives me pause. It's almost September. Then again, if the app works and is mature, that's not important. But that is rarely the case.
The Mac App only has a single review in the Swiss App Store, and it's one star. User says the UI for entering new notifications is terrible. That it's so bad he's actually faster doing it on the iPhone, defeating the whole purpose of a Mac client. Can anyone tell me more on this? Or let me know what the reviews in the US look like? iPhone app reviews are also pretty mixed with an average of 3.5 stars out of 29 reviews.
http://notificant.com/
I'm not sure what's up here, but this doesn't even show up when I search for it on appshopper.com. And even if it did, neither the Mac nor the iPhone app seem to be available outside the US App Store. iTunes and the Mac App Store give me the "change store" message. So no go on this one's out. (I'm in Switzerland, btw).

Can anyone suggest other options? It seems strange to me that there is no definitive answer to a problem that I presume must be a fairly common one.

As of OS X Mountain Lion (coming in Summer 2012), Reminders will have an iCloud-syncing desktop equivalent.

Since Reminders is integrated with Notifications in iOS, and the desktop edition presumably will work with desktop notifications as well, this should be a good, out-of-the-box way to meet your (simple) stated needs.


How do I find the current Mission Control space number from the command line? Is there any way to determine the number of the currently active Mission Control space/desktop in Mac OS X Lion from the command line?

I found this post on the main SO site.. Seems simple enough (er not really)..

Hope this helps.


Mountain Lion Installation Error I was helping a friend to do a clean install on his Macbook Pro with the bootable Mountain Lion USB disk (By holding down the option key at boot up and choosing the USB Installer) but I got stuck with the following screen.

Since Apple is descriptive about its error messages, could you guys let me know what could be the problem here is?

It indicates that the MacBook Pro was not able to load the OS kernel from the selected disk. The usual reason for this is that it's an OS version that doesn't support that model (Mountain Lion supports MBP's starting with the Mid/Late 2007 models (see the specs). Another possibility is that the USB disk is damaged, improperly set up, or something like that.


How to uninitialize an external disk in MacOS I am attempting to erase an external disk and use it as a backup. I am sure the physical disk is not broken, but it is in a state where I cannot erase, restore, or partition it from Disk Utility.
Trying to restore from an image file yields OSStatus error 22. How can I completely remove all data from the disk? There is nothing on the disk that I need to keep, I just need to make it usable.

I flashed an linux image to the disk, then attempted to erase it to be used as storage.
Output of diskutil list:
     GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            15.1 GB    disk1s1
   2:              APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 15.1 GB    disk1s1s1
   3:                APFS Volume Preboot                 322.9 MB   disk1s2
   4:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.1 GB     disk1s3
   5:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk1s4
   6:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     332.3 GB   disk1s7

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *31.0 GB    disk2
   1:           Linux Filesystem                         718.2 MB   disk2s1
   2:                        EFI ARCHISO_EFI             68.2 MB    disk2s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         307.2 KB   disk2s3
                    (free space)                         30.3 GB    -

I am not really used to partitioning and formatting disks in MacOS, so any advice would be helpful.

Is it this disk ?
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *31.0 GB    disk2
   1:           Linux Filesystem                         718.2 MB   disk2s1
   2:                        EFI ARCHISO_EFI             68.2 MB    disk2s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         307.2 KB   disk2s3
                    (free space)                         30.3 GB    -

If yes you can do :
diskutil erasedisk jhfs+ "Free Name" gpt disk2

You can try
diskutil umountdisk force disk2

Then retry
diskutil erasedisk jhfs+ "Free Name" gpt disk2


Can I connect a LED cinema display to an iMac late 2013? I'm wondering if I can connect:

LED Cinema Display (27-inch)

to a:

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

My conundrum arises because the iMac has only thunderbolt ports but LED Cinema Display uses a miniDisplayPort connector. The port shape is identical but I'm wondering if the connection works.
Here Apple says:

Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 are not the same as Mini DisplayPort .
They have the same shape, but use different symbols on the cable and
port. However, this port does support Mini DisplayPort for video
output, so you can use a Mini DisplayPort cable to connect a Mini
DisplayPort display.

... but I'd like to doble check if somebody has already made this setup work.

I connect a 13” touchbar macbook pro with usb-c ports to my 27” apple display with apple adaptors and also my 15” macbook pro to the same display with suitable apple adaptors.
Works fine.


How I can start mongodb automatically? I'm doing like here is described

http://hunterford.me/mongodb-startup-item/

but my file called different and path is here ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist. and mongo is starting well, but after system restart i have go through two last command again

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongo.mongod.plist
sudo launchctl start org.mongo.mongod

If you have to use sudo to load it, the plist file may be owned by root. Launchd will only automatically load agents that you own from ~/Library/LaunchAgents, where it will load agents owned by root from /Library/LaunchAgents.

You can do ls -l ~/Library/LaunchAgents to view the ownership of the plist. If you actually want it to run under your user account, you can change it's ownership:

sudo chown `whoami` ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

However, if you need to run mongod as root, you should leave the plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons


Is there a second-generation Airport Express 802.11n? In late 2011 there were refreshes to Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. At the time there was speculation that there would be a second generation of the Airport Express 802.11n model.

I'm in the market for a new one but I can't find any solid evidence that there was actually a new model ever released. I notice when checking my current model's serial number that Apple specifies it as AirPort Express 802.11n (1st Gen), which makes me think there's a later generation, but again I have no actual info on it.

Does anyone have an answer on this?

Not yet on a 2nd gen 802.11n Express.

Apple has published four different manuals on the Airport Express:

AirPort Express 802.11n (1st Generation) - Setup Guide

The three expresses prior to that were not 802.11n so perhaps that's where the three previous generations (and the 1st and only newer generation names have come to be) A tad confusing, no?


View/extract embedded archives with RAR So I have something like this:

I got this with rar l file2.rar

This basically is one archive inside of another.

Is there any way to list/extract the contents of file.rar that is inside file2.rar with RAR for terminal without extraction?

Note: I am using RAR 5.50 on macOS High Sierra.

I figured out that it is possible to do with Midnight Commander.


Could I use my iMac 2010 (mini-DisplayPort) and Windows 10 as a second monitor for my Mac laptops? I have an iMac 21.5" Mid 2010 that has a miniDisplayPort on the back.  Is there any way to connect a Mac laptop (either a mac with Thunderbolt 1 or 2 or 3 port or a Macbook 12” with USB-C  port) with a cable (such as a MiniDisplayPort to MiniDisplayPort Cable) to my iMac that uses Windows 10 (not Parallels, just Windows 10).

I’d use this to use my iMac as an external display for troubleshooting Macs that have display issues.

Any help much appreciated.

No, it cannot be done while the iMac is running Windows 10 natively.

The feature you're looking for is called "Target Display Mode". It only works when the iMac is booted into macOS.

You can read all about how the feature works and its requirements here:

https://support.apple.com/el-gr/HT204592#requirements


Reset default track zoom in Logic Pro X I somehow made a false move, and Logic Pro X changed the default track zoom for a project to "half screen height". I can't imagine any use for that feature, but there it is. It's a long tedious manual process to fix all the tracks, and when I create a track stack in that project it's created at half the height of the screen, and must be manually fixed. If I enable automation on a track, I must manually resize the track header to show the automation controls, and then I must manually resize it back to normal after I hide automation. This is immensely tedious.

Is there any way to make my project normal again?

I've read this page, and the part that claims to address my issue is simply wrong. The UI does not work that way.

The shift-drag suggestion in the documentation has no effect at all. The "Individual Track Zoom Reset for All Tracks" Key Command sounds promising, but it does the exact opposite: It sets all of my painstakingly corrected track heights back to half the height of the screen.

I found some practical-joke forum posts which suggested shift-double-click on the lower border of a track header. That of course sets all of my painstakingly corrected track heights back to half the height of the screen.

Another thing: I've had to red volume automation several times on one particular track since this disaster befell the project. I do it, and it works for a while, and then the automation is just not there any more. When I moved the audio to a duplicate track, automation stopped working: Automation says minus infinity dB, yet I hear the track loud and clear. I don't need a fade there, so  just split the audio to work around the bug. But now it keeps turning the fader on the track to zero anyway, with no automation. Is this a known syndrome?

The default track zoom is controlled by a little slider in the upper right corner just above the tracks area:

Clearly, I must have accidentally touched the mouse button while the pointer was above that slider. Once that slider is set to a sensible value, everything behaves normally, and shift-double-click on a track header border resizes all tracks to that sensible height.

However, they will never behave quite normally again. A sad and inexcusable mess on the Logic team's part.

The automation issue must be unrelated.


Remove dock notification badge for apps not in notification center For nuisance apps that set a badge notification icon, but which are not in the Settings Notifications center, is there a way to block the badge icon?

Spotify, for example, creates a notification for every insignificant event, with no way of blocking it in app.

Personally I don't understand how apps are allowed to show a badge icon without being in the Notifications center in the first place.

Example:

I have a solution that I was able to reverse engineer. I've tested it on my machine, running Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E46). If you can find the bundle ID (in the Info.plist file for the app bundle), you can use this script to force the app to appear in the notifications preferences pane.

# "Usernoted" seems to be the "user notifications daemon", so get it's PID.
pid=$(ps aux | grep -i [u]sernoted | awk '{print $2}')

# Find the sqlite3 database that this program has open. It's in a "private" folder (app sandboxing).
db="$(lsof -p $pid | grep com.apple.notificationcenter/db/db\$ | awk '{print $9}')"

# I got the bundleid from Spotify.app/Contents/Info.plist
bundleid="com.spotify.client"

# I use 0 as the flags because you can change all the settings in System Preferences
# 5 seems to be the default for show_count
# Grab the next-highest sort order
sql="INSERT INTO app_info (bundleid, flags, show_count, sort_order) VALUES ( '$bundleid', 0, 5, (SELECT MAX(sort_order) + 1 FROM app_info) );"

# Run the command
sqlite3 "$db" "$sql"

# Restart usernoted to make the changes take effect
killall usernoted

At this point you can open System Preferences -> Notifications, and you will find the app that you just added at the bottom of the list. You can enable / disable badging the icon from this page.


Zoom in where the focus is I use Mac. When I do a presentation or make a screen recording, sometimes I need to zoom in to the part where the focus is; then I need to zoom out to restore the normal screen size.
I have seen people doing this, but I don't know how they achieved that by keyboard and mouse.
Does anyone know?

I believe you can do this with accessibility features that are baked into macOS. They're located under System Preferences -> Accessibility. You can change the keyboard shortcuts under System Preferences -> Keyboard.
There are a couple different settings for the zoom type. It sounds like you might want to try fullscreen.


Mac Mini 1,1 (10.6.8) Missing libc++ My Mac Mini 1,1 running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 is missing libc++. Is there a version for OS X 10.6.8? Is there a way to install it again through Homebrew?

As it turns out I had a purchased copy of Xcode for Snow Leopard. Installing that fixed it.


Is there a way to get system-wide Grammarly correction on MacOS? Is it possible to get Grammarly checking system-wide on MacOS? As far as I know, Grammarly only works as a browser plugin or Microsoft Office plugin (maybe more). Grammarly is fantastic, but the need to copy and paste my work into a designated Grammarly field is beyond inconvenient. Even a menu bar icon with a checker would be more convenient. I mainly work with 3rd-Party apps on Mac that don't have a Grammarly plugin.
I like how on iPhone Grammarly is a keyboard extension that captures your spelling live as you type.
What are some alternatives if this is impossible?

Currently, there is no such support with Grammarly for macOS.


Memory usage on Mac OS, how Activity monitor works? I have these stats, but is the system really using almost 4GB?

This Inactive memory... Can't I use it? How should I interpret these stats?

I suspect you probably are using Mac OS 10.7 which is very memory hungry. As noted by kccqzy, the purge command may reclaim some inactive memory if you have XCode installed.

Something you should try is closing and reopening applications which are memory hungry or have a tendency to leak memory (Safari, Firefox). Alternatively, restarting your computer would also accomplish the same though take considerably longer.

To answer the question, are you really using 4GB of memory. Yes. Technically more if you take note of the "Swap used:" stat.


Ghost folders in /Volumes I've had a problem today where when I plug my external HDD in, it creates a ghost folder in /Volumes with the same name, causing my hard drive to change it's path to /Volumes/HDD 1. This is messing with programs that direct to /Volumes/HDD.
Is there someway to fix this? Also, my harddrive has an issue where even a small bump can cause it to give the error of it not being removed properly, so this could potentially be the cause of it.

Thanks for the help.

Yes - premature ejection can cause these ghosts.

You would need to script a cleanup that uses df and diskutil list and ls /Volumes to remove the ghost entries.

I typically do this by hand as it happens very infrequently to me.


Pages 5 for iOS 7 not syncing Pages 5 on my iPad and iPod does not seem to be syncing with iCloud, while my Mac is. I've tried everything there is online. Yes, my Documents and Data is on for iCloud, I've tried resetting Documents and Data, etc. They won't download them from iCloud and won't upload. The documents have an upload icon on them, but they won't upload.
Any help would be great.
Thanks!

I suggest doing the following:

Remember to backup every file through email if not already synced with iCloud.

Disable and then enable iCloud sync for Pages in the Settings app under Pages section, it's located in Preferences - Pages, the switch is labelled Use iCloud. Quit the app through launcher before disabling, launch the app after disabling, and then quit it before enabling again.
Disable and then enable document syncing for Pages app under Preferences - iCloud - Documents and Data, the switch is labelled Pages. Do the same thing in italic as in (1).
Delete the app and then install it again.
Disable and then enable system-wide Documents & Data syncing under Preferences - iCloud. Do the same thing in italic as in (a).
Delete iCloud account from iPhone and then add it again. It can be done under Preferences - iCloud.


Problems logging into MacOS using Active Directory user not working, but SSH works fine I am having trouble with logging into our MacOS device in the office but I can SSH into the device and I can view the login screen via VNC.

What steps can I use to troubleshoot why I cannot log into the Mac as any user?

I found a solution by deleting the user and creating a new user with the same name through the command line. I've no idea why the problem happened, but all other solutions didn't work.


Exiting/Starting the Terminal (El Capitan) In the latest Mac OS X Terminal version I noticed that if I type exit and the press Enter, I get the following:

Last login: Wed Jan 27 09:18:48 on ttys000
Ian-iMac:~ Ian$ exit
logout
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.

[Process completed]

As far as I can remember, previous versions of the terminal, simply closed the window when you entered exit.

Is there anyway to restart the same terminal after [Process completed] displays? Or should I completely close the window and restart the terminal? It looks like I can't type anything after entering [Process completed] displays.

When the Shell exits, it means that you are done. So one option is to close the window and manually start another one (or you can simply press cmd+N to automatically open another shell).

Another option that can save you some time is to make Terminal automatically close the tab after the exit process has been performed properly.
Open Terminal Preferences > Profiles > Select your profile > Shell tab > When the shell exits --> Close the window. In such a way, if you want to start again your shell (after having exit) you should just open another one.