Time Machine is Frozen I am running Mac 10.8.5 on a 2008 MacBook Pro, I have my time machine save to an external hard drive. Recently I have been unable to back up my machine because it gets hung up on 'Preparing Back Up' I have seen it chug away for 5 hours preparing that thing, I'm begging to think that it might be broken. I have gone into the external hard drive, and deleted the .inProgress then tried to Back up, didn't work. I have also tried to delete the old back ups, I say tried because while the delete dialogue comes up, they don't go anywhere. I have had to do this in standard finder view because the Starfield freezes when I try to go into that. So my questions are these, what is wrong with my Time Machine? Can it be fixed? Should I just reformat my external hard drive and restart the Time machine?

EDIT:
The logs for the inProgress files were empty, there is no latest and the last one that worked, from october said:

Time elapsed: 0.144 seconds

Processing preflight info
  Space needed for this backup: 3.54 GB (864605 blocks of size 4096)
  Preserving last snapshot /Volumes/TR/Backups.backupdb/Danny Michaelis’s MacBook Pro (2)/2013-10-13-174902.inProgress/6949$
Finished processing preflight info

Copying items from "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID:A336210F-DE80-3901-A8E1-2146BBCC66F6 eventDBUUID:5D8F456A-237A-477B-B3EC-D$

Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/lego90511/.appinventor to /Volumes/TR/Backups.backupdb/Danny Michaelis’s MacBook Pro (2)/20$
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/lego90511/.DownloadManager to /Volumes/TR/Backups.backupdb/Danny Michaelis’s MacBook Pro (2$
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/lego90511/Applications/Portal.app to /Volumes/TR/Backups.backupdb/Danny Michaelis’s MacBook$

Finished copying items for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID:A336210F-DE80-3901-A8E1-2146BBCC66F6 eventDBUUID: 5D8F456A-237A-477$

Time elapsed: 29 minutes, 10.000 seconds
Copied 3092 items (25.7 MB)
Gathering events since 3981278.
Needs new backup due to change in /usr/discreet/backburner/Network/Servers/0022412EF7D001C6.xml
Some filesystem changes made during the course of the backup may not be accounted for. Still busy after 2 retries.

Backup complete. Total time elapsed: 33 minutes, 4.000 seconds

EDIT: Result when trying to manually delete the .inProgress files.

/Volumes/TR/Backups.backupdb/Danny Michaelis’s MacBook Pro (2)  sudo rm -rf 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/5ADB13D8-B389-41FB-8D03-68664417956E: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/96A0E2FF-58AC-4E37-8ACA-AA2E8CA64BB7: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/A77B6AC7-B833-49E2-BA5D-539310D7EFBD: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/C1D640A9-FC6D-4EF4-A7A1-5436F26B445A: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/C5CC4A02-9D03-4338-A415-EABA563B7E60: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/CB5011C8-4C67-42A9-9BE7-0BC8A07C0031: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/E52CEACD-A8EC-4E8A-B461-7EE00CD4D9AC: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress/E57AD845-3A4F-4625-830A-017D8C02CA42: Operation not permitted
rm: 2013-12-10-105000.inProgress: Operation not permitted

1: Try this before we proceed:

Unplug your Time Machine backup device
Open Disk Utility (Open Finder > Click Go at Top Menu Bar > Utilities > Disk Utility.app)
Click on your main HDD at the left
Click Repair Disk Permissions
Enter an Administrator Username/Password and Click OK
Once complete, plug in your Time Machine backup device and retry

If this doesn't work, then we need to checkout your logs files (instructions below).

2: How to view your Time Machine log files:
Time Machine keeps a log specific to each backup in the root directory of the backup.
To access its logs, do the following:

Open Terminal (Open Finder > Click Go at Top Menu Bar > Utilities > Terminal.app)
Type cd /Volumes/[Time Machine disk name]/Backups.backupdb/[Machine name]/Latest
Type sudo nano .Backup.log to view the log file

Note: To view the "in progress" logs go into inProgress directories via Terminal you can also see the hidden log files if you type 'ls -al'.
Let us know what these log files say and we can better assist you with your issue.

3: Lets check the system log for the Time Machine's backup process.
I'm certain your issue lies with a single or a couple files that are not behaving nicely.

Open Terminal (Open Finder > Click Go at Top Menu Bar > Utilities > Terminal.app)
Type sudo grep backupd /var/log/system.log
Report your results to your original post above


Email Contacts/Phone Contacts I have an iPhone 6, and my email contacts are in my phone contacts.  I am not using gmail so none of the suggestions that I have seen address this problem.  Would be gracious for some help with this?

There are two things that I suggest that you do to rectify this issue:

Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, and Calendar -> turn off "Contacts found in mail".
For extra measure, scroll up to your email address, select it, and disable Contacts.

*this was moved from comments above to help others looking for this answer.


is it possible to use iCloud to share Pages files on a Mac amongst users I find the iCloud product to be confusing. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have a read only copy of a document pushed from one user to another user both on a mac. This would seem to be really straightforward to set up on a mac but it doesn't seem to be. Also thinking of using Dropbox but want to see if it can be done in iCloud. Any ideas on getting this to work? Or is iCloud really only for syncing amongst devices from the same user?

thx

The only way to share documents with other people via iCloud (at this time) would be to give them your iCloud password—not a great idea, particularly if it's also your iTunes Store ID.

Using the shared folder option of DropBox is sounder practice.


Processes in Activity Monitor with gray lettering Why are there some processes listed in Activity Monitor for applications that I've recently quit? They are displayed in light grey characters under the Energy tab, and the only column with data is the Avg Energy Impact column:

When I run ps ax | grep -i <partial name of command> nothing comes back (well, actually, it returns the grep I just executed, but that's not what I'm after). For what it's worth, I'm running 10.12.6.

Your screenshot is heavily cropped, but I presume you're on the Energy tab instead of CPU or Memory. The Energy tab shows recent applications (not all processes) and displays their Average Energy Impact. Simply being in the list on the Energy tab does not mean the application/process is running — the opposite in fact when looking at greyed out applications.


Is there a way to set Instagram as default camera app on iPhone? Is there a way to set Instagram as default camera app on iPhone?

So that I can open it from the lock screen?

As far as I know, the only way to do this is to jailbreak and use a Cydia app called AnyLockApp. It allows you to configure the behavior of the camera button that appears on the lock screen. You can set any app to be activated by that button. See also the AnyLockApp page.

Settings screen:

This hack will probably not work in iOS 5.1. However, this is unconfirmed. I will update this answer when I do update and jailbreak iOS 5.1.
Besides this hack, there is no other way to change the behavior of the camera button on the lock screen.


Is there a more convenient VPN toggle in iOS 9.1? Is there an convenient way for me to toggle VPN on or off in iOS 9.1 without navigating through the Settings screen each time?

Previously (on Android), I used an app to automate this based on my location and it was pretty reliable. Searching through the App Store, I am unable to find any advanced automation apps.

I have discovered FlipControlCenter which would place a convenient toggle button in the swipe up menu, however I'm currently running iOS 9.1 and would like to avoid jailbreaking if possible.

I am aware that some paid VPN services do have apps which can be launched and used to toggle VPN on or off, however I am running my own personal VPN service.

Try VPNOn (AppStore link). It has convenient toggles in Notification Center and Apple Watch.


How can I change the data source of a chart in Numbers '09? I have made a chart in Numbers '09 and now I want to create another very similar chart but with different data, so I have copied and pasted the chart and now I want to make it take its source data from a different table.

When I select the chart I can see a blue box with a grey header indicating the data-source in the table, but I can't drag this into another table - so how do I change it?

As far as I know there is no way to make the desired changes all at once, but there is a way that you can make things significantly faster than creating a brand new chart.

As it appears you've already done, copy and paste the chart into your Numbers worksheet. Depending on the chart you've created, select an individual line, bar, pie segment etc. and open the chart pane in the inspector. Here's a screenshot of what that looks like (with "Example 2" being the copied and pasted chart):

As you can see, in the field labeled "Data," Table 1 is referenced. This source can easily be changed to a different table. Just delete the listed source and select the new source of data from your worksheet (you don't have to type in the source). Depending on your chart you may also want to change the data source for the x-axis labels. This is also controlled by the inspector. That can be changed here:

While you'll have to change the data source for each line of the chart, it's certainly faster than creating a whole new chart and having to format it the way you'd like.


Are ARDAgent permissions really safe? I'm running on El Capitan 10.11.6, patched with the latest security updates at the time of writing.

I recently ran a permission repair on the root volume:

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --verify --standard-pkgs /

I noticed the following log entry:

  Warning: SUID file 'System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent' has been modified and will not be repaired.

Intrigued, I investigated on the binary, and landed on this page (amongst others).

This made me a little paranoid, so I searched again, and found this page, where the accepted answer reassures me that Disk Utility likely doesn't "know" the file has been patched for security reasons.

As I'm a little stubborn, I checked the actual ownership/permissions for that binary on my system:

-rwsr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   1.1M Mar  6 19:15 ARDAgent

Looks like group (wheel) and all others can execute the binary.

My question: is that actually safe, for an application vulnerable to arbitrary/malicious and escalated code execution?

Shouldn't I at least chmod it to a-x?

tl;dr There does not seem to be anything unusual, or inherently unsafe, with your ARDAgent executable or its permissions. Your proposed fix will in fact make your system a tiny bit safer but might do more harm than good. It’s probably not worth it.

With chmod a-x, the gain in security would be really small; a software update might simply reset the flag, leaving you with a false sense of security; you’ll definitely break ARD; you might also forget to re-enable SIP, or even break future system updates.

What has happened

Let’s first summarize what has happened with respect to ARDAgent in the past.

Back in 2008, the OSA libraries (a part of Mac OS X) had a root privilege escalation issue (CVE-2008-2830), which would allow attackers to execute arbitrary AppleScript using a privileged app.
One popular way to demonstrate CVE-2008-2830 was to use the ARDAgent app as a confused deputy to execute arbitrary AppleScript code with elevated privileges.
That exploit was possible because ARDAgent used the OSA libraries (containing the bug at that time) and because it is designed to run with superuser rights.
The SUID warning message by Disk Utility is very likely caused by a minor oversight introduced with OS X 10.5. The SUID warning used to bother Mac users as early as 2007; first reports appeared on the day 10.5 was released, and CVE-2008-2830 had not even surfaced. So I don’t think the warning has anything to do with the bug, the exploit, or with Apple’s subsequent patch.
At present, CVE-2008-2830 has been fixed for almost a decade. I haven’t seen reports since on any other vulnerability involving ARDAgent.

Your threat model

All that history aside, let’s move on to clarify the threat scenario you most likely have in mind; feel free to edit your question in case I’m wrong.

For the sake of threat modeling, let’s assume that ARDAgent 3.9.2 (the version that ships with El Capitan) has another unrelated vulnerability, one that is not publicly known as of today but might be discovered and exploited by an attacker.
In the worst case, that vulnerability would be a remote code execution (RCE) issue; an attacker might then be able to exploit the bug over the network to gain code execution (due to the bug) and  superuser privileges (due to the setuid bit) in one go. This is a somewhat realistic threat.
If the attacker already has local code execution with normal privileges, escalation can probably be achieved by the same means.
We’re not interested in an attacker that already has superuser privileges in the first place; such an attacker would have complete control over the entire system already, and would not gain anything by attacking ARDAgent.

Risk mitigation

If you run chmod a-x against the executable as per your suggestion (which is only possible with SIP disabled), the attacker loses: launchd will no longer run the agent, and the local attacker won’t either. You have successfully reduced the attack surface – albeit only by a small fraction.

Impact of the fix

On macOS, there are many processes with superuser privileges, be it with or without setuid. The fact that there was a bug in ARDAgent one decade ago does not make it inherently any less secure than the other programs. On average, other processes are just as likely as ARDAgent to have an undiscovered critical vulnerability.

You will lose Apple’s remote desktop features (if you have them enabled). You might also run into a random future macOS update failing because the flags might have become part of a pre-update signature assertion (not unlike the SUID warning a decade ago, but this time Apple might choose to make it an error). Chances are you’ll have forgotten your fix by then so you’d have to reinstall.

Even if the system updates work, they might simply reset the execution bit when shipping the next version of ARDAgent, leaving you with a false sense of security.

There’s also the risk of forgetting to re-enable SIP (which will introduce much more risk than you have just mitigated). And lastly, there’s a small risk of making an inconspicuous little mistake while chmodding, for example rwsrw-rw- – which means every user gains no less than root privileges for free.

Alternatives

A few suggestions to mitigate risk in a safer way:

Reduce the attack surface by disabling services you do not need. While this might not always protect against escalation attacks (an attacker with local code execution might just launch the agent directly), it will help prevent RCE.
Re-enable SIP if it’s disabled, and leave it enabled.
Search for, and remove, non-system files owned by root that have setuid/setgid bits set without good reason. If you absolutely need to leave the bits enabled, make sure the files are never group- or world-writable.


MacOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) uses h/w encryption? I have a LaCie 2big, connected via Thunderbolt 2.

When I select as a disk-partition MacOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted), does that uses some type of hardware encryption or is it all software?

Using this option, you'll endup with a whole disk encryption.

It uses OSX CoreStorage volume management technology and XTS-AES 128-bit encryption, so it's software.

Edit : As pointed Alan Shutko, since 2011 Intel added an Intruction set to intel processor to do AES encryption.


Reliability of cheaper RAM like Komputerbay, or unbranded? Online stores sell DDR3 memory from companies like Komputerbay for a fraction of the price that Kingston, Samsung, Crucial, OWC, etc. charge (not mentioning Apple OEM).

Most reviews are good, but some people report it not working. That's not actually a problem, since Amazon will give you a refund; so the important question is:

With RAM, if it works initially and passes hardware tests, does that mean it's likely that it won't have future problems?

(Reviews only represent a fraction of the people that bought the items, so if it works right away they're likely to leave a positive one and not come back to edit it if things go wrong months or years down the line.)

I have used RAM from "tier 1" vendors, as well as from "value" vendors like the ones that you've mentioned. I've had very few sticks "go bad over time" or "just die", but I tend to buy DIMMs (dual in-line memory module) appropriate for the application.

This last bit is key: RAM from a vendor who manufactures a quality product (good solder joints, board integrity, etc.) typically has problems when used outside of its intended parameters, generally defined by inconsistencies in speed, timing, and latency (the gap of time between when the computer attempts to read/write/act on the RAM and the resulting change).

You can install slower RAM in a faster computer. In fact, many computers tend to run slower, adjusting themselves to the RAM's timing. If you overclock any part of the system (processor, RAM, video card, etc.), the component needs to handle the additional thermal demand placed on it. RAM that cannot dissipate heat effectively enough will eventually have future problems, as the continual exposure to too much heat causes some parts to melt or degrade.

Just because "Vendor X" has RAM priced at an absurdly low (or high!) price doesn't mean that it's a good deal. Just make sure the RAM meets your system's requirements. As @lupincho's comment states, using the vendor's "configurator" will get you the appropriate components for your system, and a much greater chance the vendor will stand behind their warranty.


How do I copy a Mac volume using cp? I have researched this for hours. In Single User Mode, I used:

cp -Rpvn /* /Volumes/MyBackup

My external USB is mounted on /Volumes/MyBackup

The issue however is that after 24hrs it still has not stopped copying 300GB of data to an external USB drive. I think it is having issues with symbolic links such as the /Volumes/MacHD volume also having a /Volumes/MacHD and /Volumes/MyBackup I am not sure about this however.

How do I copy a Mac volume using cp? Is cp -Rpvn /* /Volumes/MyBackup correct?

Use rsync for this purpose since cp cannot faithfully reproduce all the files that exist on OS X. The benefits of rsync over ditto and cp are:

interrupted transfers can restart easily with very little cost.
restarts even resume part way through a large file.
file exclusion and --dry-run allow easy testing and iterative thinning.

The simplest way to use rsync and preserve most things (permissions, symlinks, edit dates, etc) is to use the -a or --archive flag to archive. To see your progress use -P or --progress

Rsync works as:

rsync options source destination

In your case I would recommend the following:

rsync --archive --verbose --one-file-system --human-readable --progress /from/ /to

Or in short:

rsync -avxhP /from/ /to

Mind the lack of trailing slash in the /to location.

see comments for more useful flags


How can I upload HD video from iPhone 4 directly to web? How can I upload HD video from iPhone 4 directly to web?

Pixelpipe
From https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/3486/is-there-a-way-to-upload-higher-resolution-videos-to-youtube-or-any-video-sharin

This free app allows iPhone 4 users to
directly upload their 720P videos to
YouTube, as well as Flickr, Facebook,
MobileMe, Viddler, Posterous and a
whole slew of other video sharing
sites. The app evens works via email
and FTP. The only caveat is that the
videos cannot be over 200 MB in size.

Regarding with how to use it, check out this post:
http://islandinthenet.com/2010/07/06/pixelpipe-upload-720p-hd-video-from-iphone-4-to-youtube/
I recommend that post, it gives some great information on the app and how it is used.
For example:

A “pipe” is the
connector between the PixelPipe app
and one or more destination sites
where you want your content to be
uploaded. For example, I set up pipes
for flickr, picasa, and Dropbox and
many others.
I setup some of my pipes as default
routes. This means that any media I
select to upload will automatically go
to these default pipes.
For each pipe
I created, PixelPipe created a routing
tag. The routing tag explicitly tells
PixelPipe where to upload the content
overriding any default routes. If you
want your content routed to different
photo sets you can create a routing
pipe and tag for each one.

Also, given this:

since other developers are sure to create a similar product now that they know it is possible to upload 720p videos.

If you don't like the PixelPipe app, it shouldn't be too long before another solution pops up :)
According to this page, an app called SmugMug is also 720p uploading enabled, however I couldn't find much in reference to that on their site.
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/01/want-to-upload-720p-from-iphone-4-try-pixelpipe/


Swift usage and payment as Apple Developer My friend and I are planning to use Swift to develop an application for our computer science class. I know there is a $99 fee for being an Apple developer but I was confused as to exactly where this applies. The Swift language itself is open source and downloadable through Xcode. If we were to just create the application but not place it on the App Store for purchase, do we still have to pay the $99?

The $99 fee is only if you want to publish apps to the App Store. You can download all the latest release versions of the development tools and create your own apps without paying anything.

The Development account also allows you access to the private beta versions of Apple's operating systems and development tools, so if you wanted the latest beta of watchOS, iOS, macOS or tvOS, you would need to pay the $99.


MacBook Pro - Mid 2010 - Memory Errors in AHT I have recently inherited a MacBook Pro which occasionally reboots at random. It has 4Gb Ram (2X2). AHT is consistently showing a 4MEM error - e.g. '4MEM/66/40000000:0xa1e45898'

Diagnostics so far:

Re-seating/cleaning modules - same 4MEM errors.
Swapping modules between sockets - 4MEM error with different 0x value.
Testing modules individually - no errors (in either socket).

The above seems to rule out the memory modules or the sockets. Errors only occur when both modules are plugged in. Could this be a timing problem between modules? (Original Apple memory).

I have tried resetting PRAM and SMC - same errors occurring.

Any suggestions as to where to go next most welcome.

Seems it was the memory module(s). Installed two new 2Gb modules and ran AHT extended overnight. No errors.


Spanish to English and English to Spanish dictionary for Dictionary app? For quite a while now, I have been looking for English and Spanish conversion dictionaries (both ways) for Apple's native Dictionary application. So far I have not had any success.

Is there any free, decent quality solution such as "New Oxford American Dictionary" and "Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française"?

Any links or information would be highly appreciated.

The latest MacOS versions already include Spanish dictionaries which can be enabled in preferences in the Dictionary.app (⌘+,).
The answer below is for converting and installing third-party dictionaries from other popular formats.
To create a dictionary for the built-in OS X Dictionary.app you will first need pyglossary to convert to the AppleDict format from the input format which can be ABBYY Lingvo DSL, Babylon BGL, Stardict IFO, etc (see all supported formats).
Once the AppleDict source XML is generated, the Apple Dictionary Development Kit is used to generate the native binary files that the Dictionary.app can use.
Proceed as follows:
Installing dependencies

Install Xcode command line tools:
 xcode-select --install

Install the Auxiliary Tools for Xcode from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ — you'll need to login with your iCloud or Apple Developer account. Mount the DMG file by double-clicking it in Finder, and copy the folder Dictionary Development Kit to /Developer/Extras (as root) (or to ~/Developer/Extras as a normal user as pointed out by richard-möhn):
 mkdir -p ~/Developer/Extras/
 cp -r '/Volumes/Additional Tools/Utilities/' ~/Developer/Extras

Install Python 3 via homebrew (OS X comes with Python 2.x preinstalled):
 brew install python3

Checkout the pyglossary project:
 mkdir -p ~/projects
 git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ilius/pyglossary.git ~/projects/pyglossary

Install lxml and BeautifulSoup, the parsers that pyglossary depends on:
 pip3 install lxml beautifulsoup4

Now everything is ready to do the actual conversion.
Performing the Conversion

Convert the source dictionary (in this case Babylon BGL) to AppleDict:
 python3 pyglossary.pyw --read-options=resPath=OtherResources --write-format=AppleDict webster.bgl webster.xml

NOTE: This operation can take significant time if the dictionary is big.

Compile the generated AppleDict sources to OS X Dictionary.app binary files. Pyglossary creates the AppleDict sources in a subfolder named the same as the source file.

OPTIONAL: By default the dictionary name will be derived from the file name of the input file. If you want to modify the name to something else then open Makefile in a text editor, and set the title in the DICT_NAME variable (make sure you include the quotes).

    cd webster ### subdir name is derived from the source file
    make
    make install

NOTE: make can take significant time if the dictionary is big. For huge dictionaries it can take over 10 minutes.

make install copies the generated dictionary to ~/Library/Dictionaries.
Now if you restart the dictionary app and and open preferences (⌘+,) the new dictionary will appear in the list. Click the checkbox to enable it.
Other formats, for example ABBYY Lingvo DSL require more steps such as re-encoding from UTF-16 to UTF-8. Here is a wrapper script for DSL to AppleDict conversion.
Here are some Free dictionaries in Babylon BGL format. There are also literally hundreds of dictionaries available in DICTD, Stardict and ABBYY Lingvo DSL formats.


Can I install a custom OS on iPhone 5s? I got myself an owned iPhone 5s to have some fun. Today I got extra adventurous and would like to try some "unofficial" operating systems like Android and postmarketOS. Unfortunately, a quick search with Google didn't give me much information.

Is there an easy switch to jailbreak iPhone 5 that’s documented here - not yet.

May you find a crack or Apple key to sign whatever code you want. Of course, any hardware system could have cracks.

Can you do it? Depends on your skill and research ability and time you devote to the exercise.


increase database size on ipad Every time I try to sign into yahoo mail on my ipad, a pop-up asks whether I want to increase database size to 10MB. but whether I select Increase or Cancel, it just freezes (spinning wheel) and won't let me get to my email. Please help!! The pop-up returns every time. I'd be happy to increase but it won't let me!

This warning is there to prevent people from over filling their devices with local data and also to keep developers in check from not over stuffing the content that gets stored locally.

I don't think there is a way to white list one site to have increased space. I would clear thing by first quitting Safari using multitasking controls, and then go to the settings app -> Safari -> Advanced -> Website Data and clear all the data.

That would allow it to start cleanly. You also might want to be sure your device itself wasn't totally full by checking Usage under general in the settings app.


How can I "link" different files to my folder without using soft link? I have some some folders look like this structure:

Buy folder -> state_diagram_for_buy, activity_diagram_for_buy
Sell folder -> state_diagram_for_sell, activity_diagram_for_sell
Search folder -> state_diagram_for_search, activity_diagram_for_search

I want to group all the state_diagrams and activity diagrams in two folder.
So one folder is used to store state_diagram and another one is used to store the activity diagrams.

However, I don't want to copy those file, since any changes in the original files cannot reflect on the copy one. I know there is a Unix command: ln can be used to create the linking. But are there other ways to create the linkings in finder because I don't know to type the commands many time...

You can create a smart search for each type of file. Make a search in Finder by file name (you can also enter other criteria) and when you're satisfied with the results, save it.


Missing keyboard Shortcuts? Been using Mac now for about a month and still looking for 2 basic shortcuts.

Windows equivalent for "Delete" - where it deletes the character in front of the cursor.
Currently, "delete" on my mac acts more as "backspace". Tried ⌘ CommandDbut that just creates bookmark on chrome.
Word processing text navigation - windows equivalent of ^ Control  + Arrow keys to jump between words, separated by spaces.
I'd like to be able to combine this with ^ Control ⇧ Shift  + Arrow to select multiple words.

On the Mac, using ^ Control  or ⌘ Commandmove entire lines, and ⌘ Command Backspace deletes full lines/sentences.

The first one is Fn⌫ Delete or ^ ControlD for keyboards without an Fn key

As for moving between words, use the ⌥ Option modifier.  Example, ⌥ Option➞ to move to the word to the right.

There's an excellent list of all the predefined shortcuts on Apple's Support site.


File for a Custom Keyboard Emoji Is there a way I can add a file (and what type would it be) to the symbols or special characters for use as a custom emoji? If so, would there be a way to set a key to it?

If you want to make a custom emoji, you would need to create a font that contains the glyph for it.  Common font creation apps for OS X are FontForge, FontLab, RoboFont, Type, and Glyphs.

Once it is in a font, you can set a keyboard shortcut for it in system prefs/keyboard/text.

Of course other people's computers will not display your emoji unless they have your font installed, except in cases where you can embed it, such as a pdf or via a webfont placed on a server.


Inverted scrolling for external mouse I have an external microsoft mouse for my iMac. When I updated to Mavericks it inverted the mouse scrolling but I can't change it back. The mouse has a specific program that controls preferences within system preferences so changing mouse controls to "natural" within system preferences does nothing and the program has nothing to control this setting. The mouse uses bluetooth to connect to a usb connector so I can't connect the mouse directly through bluetooth mouse. How can I change the settings back to normal?

The "natural" scrolling is reverse of normal scrolling on a laptop. Switch off natural scrolling and let us know if that works.


How can I prevent Opera from closing the window if the last tab gets closed? I've set Opera to allow empty workspace which should not close the window when the last tab is closed. As closing the window in MacOS doesn't close the application, as does in Windows, maybe this configuration is ignored in MacOS, is it?

This sadly seems to be not available on OSX. You can work around it by pinning a speed dial tab:

As this is not closable via Cmd-W, it will prevent Opera from closing the window on the last tab. I use this for full screen browsing.


Running Postgres as Launch Daemon I am working on setting up a psql server and would therefore like postgres to run whenever the computer is on, regardless of whether I'm logged it. (The machine is running OS X Yosemite.) I set up a launch daemon to do this, but it doesn't work. syslog gives the following error messages:

Jul 14 17:43:01 user@server sudo[276]:     jaia : TTY=ttys000 ;
PWD=/Users/jaia ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/homeb
rew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
Jul 14 17:44:35 localhost com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (homebrew.mxcl.postgresql): T
his service is defined to be constantly running and is inherently inefficient.
Jul 14 17:44:44 localhost com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (homebrew.mxcl.postgresql): S
ervice only ran for 9 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 1 seconds.
Jul 14 17:44:45 localhost com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (homebrew.mxcl.postgresql): S
ervice only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

After that, the last message repeats indefinitely.

Here's my .plist file. The reason for sudo -u _postgres is that postgres can't run as root, which launch daemons do by default.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>homebrew.mxcl.postgresql</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>sudo</string>
    <string>-u</string>
    <string>_postgres</string>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/pg_ctl</string>
    <string>-D</string>
    <string>/usr/local/var/postgres</string>
    <string>start</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>UserName</key>
  <string>_postgres</string>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/postgres</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/postgres/server.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

MORE INFORMATION: Loading the job manually via ssh gives the ungrammatical error message "Could not find domain for". Loading it on the machine itself gives "/Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist: File exists".

What could be going wrong here?

Leave out the sudo, -u and _postgres in ProgramArguments. launchd takes care of this with the UserName key.


ML Messages not connecting automatically to some accounts I love the new Messages app in Mountain Lion, but there seems to be an issue while using it with a Yahoo account. My Yahoo account does not reconnect after the machine goes into standby or after a restart, I always have to manually connect that account, while other accounts work fine.

Does anyone know of a way of getting the Yahoo account to automatically reconnect? An AppleScript that tells Messages to connect the Yahoo account would be great too.

Edit: this seems to happen with my Gmail account as well.

I found a sort of solution to this bug. What I did is write an AppleScript which tells Messages to connect all accounts when one of the accounts successfully connects. I use Messages with Gmail, Yahoo and Bonjour, so when either of those connects, it "tells" all other accounts to connect. It's not failure-proof, but it seems to keep my accounts online properly so far.

using terms from application "Messages"
    on login finished for theService
        log in service "Yahoo!"
        log in service "Gmail"
        log in service "Bonjour"
    end login finished
end using terms from

Usage instructions:

Edit the AppleScript above to include the services you are using
Save it using "AppleScript Editor.app" to a .scpt file
Open Messages > Preferences > Alerts
Set the script to run for the "When I Log In" event.

N.B.

For the line containing log in service "<service>" you will need to replace <service> with the value you find in the Description field for that particular service in Messages’ account preferences. In my case my Yahoo! account had ”Yahoo” in its description field so I had to change log in service "Yahoo!" to log in service "Yahoo". Ditto for the other services.


How to see these characters correctly? If I view https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%88%B6 on macOS 10.12.2 and Chrome Version 55.0.2883.95 (64-bit). It shows a few characters as rectangles with a question mark inside:

How to make these characters show up correctly?

No problem seeing them on my iPad, they are Arabic, must be a chrome bug.


need help I screwed my macbook so bad thiere is one drive and no partitions, please read below So...I somehow messed up my macbook Pro model 1502 raetina 13" Late 2013, core i5, 4GB. I wanted to clean install High Sierra.  Long story short I now have a macbook with one, yes one, there is no base drive, there are no partitions at all.  I can't seem to find anywhere to download an installable version of high sierra anywhere.  Is it possible to make a boot drive from the macos that I can boot with to erase my one drive?  I'm sure there is a lot I don't know nor have thought of.  I greately appreciate any help you can offer

This is a duplicate of many questions where you boot to Recovery and re-partition / re-download an installer and set up a new OS.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

You can bring another bootable volume to the Mac as well or bring a bootable installer or just a drive with a local recovery partition as well. You don't have to erase anything - main thing is to get another OS running so you can decide if you need to backup or do data recovery. If you have a full backup or can walk away from all the data - just erase the volume and set up a new OS.

Can't start Mac in recovery mode - only get folder with question mark instead


Is it possible to replace my username in Terminal with special characters? I found this which seems close to the solution, but it's not quite there.

EDIT: With JavaScript, I know I can just run test.replace(/\w/g, "*"), where test is my username, but I don't know the equivalent for the Terminal.

The PS1 prompt is defined in /etc/bashrc and the default is usually PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '. You'd replace the \u with *****. You could also just add, e.g export PS1='\h:\W *****\$ ' to your ~/.bash_profile file, while leaving the system file (/etc/bashrc) alone.


Upgrading to OSX High Sierra breaks Terminal hot key functionality On Sierra's Terminal Command1, Command2, etc. would switch between different Terminal windows.  Now it switches between tabs within the same window.  Yes, I could use Command`to cycle between the windows, however, but I want back the previous functionality.

The Terminal settings allow you to escape this hell.

Terminal > Preferences (or Cmd-,) > General:

Second to last item: "Use Cmd-1 through Cmd-9 to switch tabs"

Unselect this option and it all goes back to how it was before!


WiFI does not work on Windows 10 BootCamp - Drops in and out Update: There was a new driver released on 4/20/2018 for Broadcom 802.11ac Network Adapter, version 7.35.118.83, but the Apple update is only now pushing it (7/9/2018).  Just installed it. Let's see how it goes.

WiFi is consistently dropping at random times regardless of network.

Question : how do I fix it so I have a reliable consistent wifi connection when I use Windows 10?

I have a MacBook Pro, purchased late 2017.

WiFi will randomly disconnect when I run Windows 10.  It works better on certain networks than others but it's always intermittent. Even on very robust networks it will eventually begin to drop. Once it drops it sometimes will simply not reconnect. Other times the drivers will randomly be disabled, not sure if this has to do with windows updates.

I tried manually installing and uninstalling drivers, rolling back drivers, installing and reinstalling the windows support software, and even using third party driver support software. Wifi connection still drops randomly with no perceivable pattern.

I went to the apple store and I was simply told that this is a windows issue.  I had windows running on a MacBook air (2010) and never experienced these issues.  It also seems they haven't come up with an update for the driver in almost two years. I ran out of ideas, any pointers on how to fix the wifi connection problem is appreciated.

Hardware info -

Manufacturer:   Broadcom

Description:    Broadcom 802.11ac Network Adapter

Driver version: 7.35.118.68

Answer: Set the Power Output of the Broadcom 802.11ac Network Adapter to 25%

The solution was found with a Google search for "macbook pro wireless disconnects randomly bootcamp windows 10" which returned the following video as result 2 Fix APPLE bootcamp wifi drop out

My System:

Macbook Pro 10,1 (Early 2013)
Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter
Driver Version: 7.35.118.73

I have been suffering with slowly degrading WiFi connection over the last couple of months (approximately).  Recently, it has got the the point where the connection will drop out and reconnect 2 or 3 times per minute.  That was really only noticeable when using a VPN connection over Cisco AnyConnect - otherwise browsing just appeared to be very slow at times.  I found that disabling the WiFi and re-enabling it would provide relief for a few minutes.

Things I tried that did not work:

Installing later drivers (not signed by Microsoft) Broadcom_BCM43xx_7.35.317.3-Win10 accessed from Search for Broadcom 43XX drivers - result 1
Unchecking the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option on the Power Management tab of the Device Properties Dialog.

I hope this works as well for others as it has for me...


Why does dictation on my MacBook Pro record my words fine but not on my iMac? The dictation in Mountain Lion on my iMac does not record many of the words I speak.

I cannot get it to make a paragraph, either on my desktop, nor my MacBook Pro.

Why does dictation on my MacBook Pro records my words fine but not on my iMac?

If it's different between two machines, the most likely issue is the microphone. Are you using the built in Mic on the iMac? If so, try an external one. Also take into account any noise sources around your iMac such as fans, air conditioners, etc.

The other possibility is that you're just getting bad luck with the dictation service. Because it's dependent on Apple's servers, the results can be spotty if load happens to be very high. But if it's happening at different times of the day, chances are it's a microphone issue.


Android device connection broken in Sierra I've recently updated my MBP Retina 2013 to Sierra GM, and today it stopped to connect the Android devices.

I have Android SDK installed and lots of devices available with different OS versions. But when I connect them to my MacBook, they are only charging, ADB does not work and I do not see them connected to USB at all:

$ ioreg -p IOUSB
+-o Root  <class IORegistryEntry, id 0x100000100, retain 17>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@1d000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000002c4, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 9>
  | +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1d100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002c6, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 12>
  |   +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1d180000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002e8, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 13>
  |     +-o Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad@1d182000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000309, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (162 ms), retain 15>
  |     +-o BRCM20702 Hub@1d181000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000324, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 12>
  |       +-o Bluetooth USB Host Controller@1d181300  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000352, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 17>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@1a000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000002cb, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 9>
  | +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1a100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002cd, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 12>
  |   +-o FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)@1a110000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000503, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (114 ms), retain 19>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@14000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000012c4, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 8>

When I connect my iPhone:

$ ioreg -p IOUSB
+-o Root  <class IORegistryEntry, id 0x100000100, retain 17>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@1d000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000002c4, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 9>
  | +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1d100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002c6, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 12>
  |   +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1d180000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002e8, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 13>
  |     +-o Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad@1d182000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000309, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (172 ms), retain 15>
  |     +-o BRCM20702 Hub@1d181000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000324, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 12>
  |       +-o Bluetooth USB Host Controller@1d181300  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000352, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 17>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@1a000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000002cb, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 9>
  | +-o IOUSBHostDevice@1a100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000002cd, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (12 ms), retain 12>
  |   +-o FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)@1a110000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000503, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (122 ms), retain 19>
  +-o Root Hub Simulation Simulation@14000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x1000012c4, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 9>
    +-o iPhone@14200000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100001414, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (3 ms), retain 19>

I've already tried:

Windows way (reboot MacBook, reboot devices).
Use different USB cable.
Connect to different port (2 available).
Use different devices (already tried 3 Samsung devices, 1 Asus and 1 HTC).

Everything was fine for a few days after the update, but does not work today.

Any suggestions?

One thing I noticed you haven't tried is resetting the PRAM/NVRAM or the SMC.

Resetting the PRAM/NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset your PRAM/NVRAM:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the command-option-p-r keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. mouse speed, time and date/timezone, etc).

Reset the SMC

Your computer's System Management Controller (SMC) can also be reset. The instructions for resetting your SMC depend on three things:

Does your device run from a built-in battery? (In your case, yes)
Does your device run from a removable battery?
Does your device just run off power from the wall?

Now, for the sake of others who may come here looking for answers to the same issue, I will provide the process for all three.

For MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and MacBooks where you can’t remove the battery on your own (i.e. it's a built-in battery), here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shift-option-control (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

For MacBook Pros, MacBooks etc that you can remove the battery from, here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button

For iMacs, Mac Pros, Mac Minis, etc that only run from a power point in the wall

Shut down your computer
Unplug it from the power
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds
Plug it back in and turn it on.

Hope this helps. Please report back and let us know.


My keyboard isn’t working and I can’t log into my laptop My sister recently spilled water on my MacBook Air's keyboard, and unfortunately I couldn’t save it. Some keys on my keyboard don’t work, like for example the half the numbers and some letters. Because of this I can’t type in my password since it requires some of the affected keys. I tried to connect my wireless keyboard but my Mac's not detecting it, even though I’ve connected it before. There’s no cable opening on the keyboard either so I can use a wire. Is there another way I can connect my keyboard to my laptop? Or is my laptop just totally done for?

Plug in any USB keyboard to the USB port.

Newest MacBook Air use USB-C connectors (ThunderBolt 3)
The rest use USB-A

Both work with any PC keyboard or Mac keyboard or whatever usb keyboard you might have around.

Hopefully the liquid damage didn’t break the USB controller or the system board. Your keyboard might be fine and the problem is no keyboard would work. If you reset your SMC once and external keyboard do not work, send your Mac in for data transfer or repair.

Here is a masterpiece on keyboards written by one of our resident experts.

Keyboard key stuck or not being recognized; how to fix


Maintain business contacts database on Mac and iPhone? My wife organises amateur and semi-pro orchestras. She has a ‘database’ of about 600 musicians which she currently keeps in an OpenOffice spreadsheet on the Mac, with each player’s name, instrument(s), contact details, some notes, and a record of which concerts they have played in. She’d now like to have this accessible on her iPhone (4S). It would be nice to be able to edit it on the iPhone, but not essential; it needs to be easy to keep the two copies in sync; it would be great if it was easy to call/SMS someone’s number from the iPhone database, but she doesn’t really want to merge the database with her iPhone address book.

I can think of a few different ways of solving this, for example:

view the spreadsheet on the iPhone using Quickoffice or Documents to Go
move the spreadsheet to Numbers on the Mac and iPhone, syncing via iCloud
use some sort of business contacts manager app, maybe adding contacts to groups to define both instrument played and concerts played in
create some sort of custom solution using Bento on the Mac and iPhone

I don’t have any of the above apps at the moment. Any advice on the ideas above, or any alternative suggestions please?

Using Numbers would work as you say it syncs when ever a change is made. The benefit of this is that it is customised to your wifes needs, i.e the filed Name, Instrument, etc, ect are what she needs.

Using Office to go adds a few unnecessary steps to the procedure, with iCloud everything just syncs.

If she were to buy a database package it is not likely to contain all the correct fields she requires and would contain a lot more that would be useless, so a bit overkill really.

However the benefit of having a database app like Bentois that all your contacts details are clickable on the app, so if she is looking for a bass player she will be able to search and then click the contact number to call them. However this has a much larger cost than just buying Numbers for iOS.


Which iPad Mini is model FD528LL/A? I'm trying to identify a friend's iPad Mini.  I know the model number from the "About" screen is FD528LL/A.  Unfortunately, I don't have the model number from the back of the iPad.  Is this an iPad Mini 1, 2, 3, or 4?

Your friend has a Refurbished iPad Mini (1st Generation, 16GB, Wi-Fi Only, Black).

The number on the back should say A1432.

The F generally indicates a refurbished product (not always).


Running mc (midnight commander) under su on Mojave/Catalina After installing prebuild mc binary to Mojave (link and link 2), and trying to run mc under root with sudo command, I got error:

$sudo mc
common.c unimplemented subshell type 1
read (subshell_pty...): No such file or directory (2)

It appears that mc requires to match precompiled shell version, e.g. /bin/bash to be the one.

In order to resolve this, its is required to change default root shell from sh to bash, and do it with following command:

sudo dscl . -change /Users/root UserShell /bin/sh /bin/bash

To revert back in case you have some problems, just reverse the parameters:

sudo dscl . -change /Users/root UserShell /bin/bash /bin/sh

Just in case above commands do not work, may be default shell was already changed. Check it with command:

dscl . -read /Users/root UserShell

Hope it will save tons of time for you.


Disable font anti aliasing in Firefox in OSX? As much searching and trying I have done, I can not disable text anti aliasing in Firefox.

Can someone please show me a screenshot of Firefox in OSX with no text aliasing. Also, how would I achieve this?

Do I need to edit the Firefox source code and call one the the Apple Quartz apis to disable test anti aliasing?

Try doing this:

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced panel -> General tab -> Remove Checkmark from "Use Hardware Acceleration when available"
Click Ok
Restart FireFox


Does the AppleTV had a place where I can see what's been downloaded to the device? I've been looking through the user interface of the 2012 AppleTV and I can't find a place to see what has been downloaded to the device (e.g. movies or TV shows)--or the progress in-process downloads. I just purchased a season of a TV show and I want to see how many of the episodes have downloaded and to make sure they're downloading, without actually going to watch a show and see what the scrubber bar says.

Nope, the latest versions of the AppleTV have 8GB of storage however the device doesn't allow the user to view or modify anything about the status storage (at least in a stock state).

During the introduction of the first all black AppleTV Steve Jobs said,

  People don't want to think about managing storage, they just want to watch movies and TV shows.


grep doesn't give the correct offset? Trying to get the bytes offset of a text word in a binary file (with some text here and there). I need to know the offset of this word from the beginning of the file. I'm wondering if on osx the command options are slightly different from other unix.

strings Agent_of_Change.mobi | grep -o -b --binary EXTH

This gives me : 31:EXTH

Not sure what 31 is, the bytes from the beginning of the line? The correct value I need would be 1617, from the beginning of the file.

Grep is likely counting the offset from the output of the strings command since it's not actually parsing the .mobi file directly.


Off-site backup of “login.keychain” I’m using the Keychain.app to manage all my (website) passwords, and I am also using the “Password assistant” to generate secure random passwords.

But obviously I’m paranoid that my laptop is lost or damaged and that I’m using all my passwords so I’m searching for a secure, comfortable backup option.

In particular, the backup has to be immediate (as soo as I’m adding a new key or editing an existing one). This can be done by registering a launch agent.

Furthermore, the storage should be off-site. Ideally, this would mean Dropbox. But I’m paranoid: their storage may be encrypted but they theoretically still have access to my data.

Now, the keychain is encrypted anyway. But is this encryption secure? Can I just rely on this and upload the backup to an essentially public storage?

1Password is a product that may interest you.  Seems to tick all the boxes in terms of speed, off-site and secure storage.  Plus it allows you to use it on all your devices too (iPhone, iPad etc).


MacBook Pro Boot camp assistant not enough space on start disk I'm getting the "not enough space on start disk" when trying to use boot camp-assistant.

I have disabled auto time machine and removed the drive.
I have used the command sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 999999999999

None of this worked.

The output of command diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 limits is:

It doesn't look right that the recommended minimum is 250 GB? What can I do about this?

Update

Have 90GB available.

Just unchecking "Back Up Automatically" in System Preferences ; Time Machine
fixed it for me.


MacBook Air not contacting Wi-Fi with NETGEAR Extender My MacBook Air is not connecting to Wi-Fi through NETGEAR Extender whilst all other device do, such as MacBook Pro, Apple TV and iPad.

I tried to:

Delete all Network configurations from System Preferences.
Reset SMC.
Reset PRAM.
Change channel on NETGEAR to channel 48.
Disable password access on NETGEAR.

MacBook Air OSX 10.8.5
13 inches
Ending 2010

Any help please?

Change the authentication method from WPA2 Personal to WPA or WEP. If the Air is older it may not be compatible.


AppleScript Error Message I am looking for a way to batch-convert/bulk-convert .doc files into .docx files. I found this TidBITS Talk that references a Redit thread for an AppleScript (AS) and a dead DropBox link for an Automator integration of mentioned AS in a WorkFlow.
However, when I run the script in Automator or Script Editor I get a Syntax Error - Expected end of line, etc. but found identifier. Inside the script compatibility is highlighted (as being the issue, I guess).
What can be done to correct the error?
Find the new version as suggested by @CJK of the entire script here below:
property theList : {"doc"}

on run {input, parameters}
        set output to {}
        tell application "Microsoft Word" to set theOldDefaultPath to get default file path file path type documents path
        repeat with theDoc in input
        tell application "System Events"
            set theFolderPath to the path of theDoc's container
            set theExtension to name extension of theDoc
            set theName to name of theDoc
        end tell
        if theExtension is in theList then
            set l to the length of theName
            set exl to the length of theExtension
            set n to l - exl - 1

            set theFilename to (text 1 through n of theName) & ".docx"

            tell application "Microsoft Word"
                set default file path file path type documents path path theFolderPath
                open theDoc
                set theActiveDoc to the active document
                save as theActiveDoc file format format document file name theFilename without maintain compatibility
                close theActiveDoc
            end tell

            set end of output to the POSIX path of (theFolderPath & theFilename)
        end if
        end repeat

        tell application "Microsoft Word" to set default file path file path type documents path path theOldDefaultPath
        return output
end run

Find here below a screenshot of Script Editor after compilation without the word compatibility (trying to compile the code with this word gives me the same error message as the one at the beginning of this post):

System used:

macOS Catalina 10.15.5
MacBook Pro (13", 2019, 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB)
Microsoft Word Version 16.39 (20071300)
Script Editor Version 2.11 (208)
Automator Version 2.10 (492)

You want folders… I got your folders right here…
To use, select a folder and run the script.
Notes: I used Word to open each document as that made it easier to match file with container, which should also reduce issues with how long it takes to open multiple files. There isn't any error correction so if your selection isn't a folder….
-- Save all 'doc' within folder structure as 'docx' in same folder
-- Create list of each 'doc' file and its containing folder
set fKind to "Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document"
tell application "Finder"
    set topFolder to selection as alias
    set refList to a reference to entire contents of topFolder

    set bList to {}
    set docList to every item of refList whose kind is fKind
    repeat with ea in docList
        set c to container of ea as alias as text
        copy {name of ea, c} to end of bList
    end repeat
end tell

-- Open each 'doc', save in same folder, close doc
tell application "Microsoft Word"
    set oldDefaultPath to get default file path file path type documents path

    repeat with b in bList
        -- b in bList example {"filename.doc", "Mac:Users:username:Documents:docFolder1:deepFolder2:"}
        set sName to first item of b
        set sPath to second item of b
        set default file path file path type documents path path (sPath)

        open sPath & sName
        save as document sName file name (sName & "x") file format format
        close document 1 saving no

    end repeat
    set default file path file path type documents path path oldDefaultPath
end tell


iOS 8 Health data: backup and iCloud I hat to bring in my iPhone for repair and I backed up all the data on iCloud and with iTunes (just to be sure). I then got a replacement phone for one week.

I was not able to recover my Health data:

The data seems not to be synchronised with iCloud (no other device as my iPad or the replacement phone see anything)
The data was not backed up. I got everything back but for the Health data

Is there a way to back Health data up?

Looks like you need to encrypt your iPhone backups for your local backups to retain health data:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6357

Hope this helps?


How to convert a cell with a duration (datetime difference) to number in Numbers? I have four fields in Numbers on macOS:

F1: datetime
F2: datetime
F3: duration
F4: number

The dateime-fieds contain only a time, like:

10:00    11:00
11:00    12:30
13:00    13:15

The duration-field is calculated by this formular:

F2 - F1

And shows something like:

1h
1h 30m
15m

This works fine.

Now I want to calculate F4 which is a number representation of the duration-field F3. For the examples above it should result in:

1
1.5
0.25

Unfortuanteley I can't find a way to achieve this. How can this be solved?

What I've tried so far:

changing the fomatting to number didn't work as it will always reset to duration
setting the field F3 to seconds-only and then calculating F3 / 3600, but the result will always be a new duration

Use the DUR2HOURS() formula.

DUR2HOURS(F3)

Pass the duration from F3 to the formula.


27" Cinema Display Windows Drivers I just built a new windows 8 PC with a GA-Z77X-UP4 TH motherboard so I could have a Thunderbolt port for my Apple LED Cinema Display 27" . Unfortunately, the display isn't working. I have read that it will work on a "hackintosh" so I would assume it's a driver issue and not a motherboard issue.

Has anyone had experience in this or does anyone know where I could find some Cinema Display drivers for Windows 7 or 8? I do have access to a MacBook Pro so could I someone get the windows drivers from the Boot Camp assistant?

I have that exact same motherboard I purchased less than a month ago. With default BIOS settings, you're right it doesn't work, but I got the 27" display to work fine without installing bootcamp drivers.

Make sure you've updated all your drivers and BIOS, especially Intel Graphics 4000 and install Virtu MVP in order to use a discrete graphics card with the thunderbolt interface for gaming/performance. Make the following adjustments to your BIOS (hold delete on boot to access BIOS settings.) Obviously, you might have to plug in a non-thunderbolt display to be able to change the settings.

Internal Graphics: Enabled
Init Display First: IGFX or PEG (not PCI)

I believe there's also a setting for Thunderbolt Bandwidth which I changed to 40, but I'm not certain if that's necessary to change to get it to work.


Users & Groups: Change Account Name, but not Home Directory? Using a company computer and creating files and whatnot, it always lists the author as being 'pseudonym'•.  Through advanced settings in Users & Groups, I can change the the Account name (ie, the short name) to the name I want, but anywhere I've searched on the internet always states that the Home directory must also be changed to reflect the new Acct. name.  Using the Advanced Settings, is there any problem with having the AccountName and Home directory not being the same?  Can I have my account name 'xXx_dArkSephiroth42_xXx'• and my home directory be 'pseudonym' without any problems?

• Names changed to protect identity

Edit: Wanted to highlight using only the Advanced Settings

Yes, the full name is unrelated to the short name and you can change the full name without needing to change the short name.


Mavericks: how to disable responsive scroll Responsive scrolling is causing a lot of issues for me. It's nice when it works, but it's lagging a lot sometimes, especially in Chrome.

Anyone found out a way to disable responsive scrolling and make scrolling behave like in 10.8? Either globally or per-app.

During the "Optimizing Drawing and Scrolling on OS X" WWDC video, the Apple Engineer uses what looks like an AppleScript file to disable responsive scrolling globally, so it is possible, but I can't figure out how.

UPDATE (7.XI.2013 after call to Apple Care):

I needed also:

1) resetting PRAM (after turn-off, turn-on while holding CMD+ALT+P+R up to second gong),
how to on your mac: https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

2) resetting SMC (after turn-off, turn-on while holding SHIFT+CTRL+ALT(option) + POWER)
how to on your mac: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

THE BELOW SETTING SHOULD BE: with inertia

It is probably NOT the permanent solution, but fast and comfortable hack in comparison to system reboot.

It worked for me. Sorry that screenshots are in Polish. Anyway, you should manage it thanks to images/icons.

First open Accessibility from System Preferences

Then in Touchpad/Mouse settings, click touchpad button

Then play with/without inertia.


What is the difference between a `service-name` and a `service-target`? Consider the following commands

# launchctl stop
Usage: launchctl stop <service-name>
# launchctl stop com.apple.SomeService
# launchctl disable com.apple.SomeService
Usage: launchctl disable <service-target>

What is the difference between a service-target and a service-name? How can I learn a service-target of a service from it's service-name?

A service target is a service name plus a target domain, which describes the context in which the service runs, e.g. whether it runs at system startup or when a particular user logs in etc.

The launchctl(1) manpage describes 6 ways of forming a service target from a service name. If you want to disable a service that runs at startup, you probably want one of these three depending on whether it's a service that runs at system startup or when you log in:

system/[service-name]
    Targets the system domain or a service within the system domain. The system
    domain manages the root Mach bootstrap and is considered a privileged execu-
    tion context. Anyone may read or query the system domain, but root privi-
    leges are required to make modifications.

user/<uid>/[service-name]
    Targets the user domain for the given UID or a service within that domain. A
    user domain may exist independently of a logged-in user. User domains do not
    exist on iOS.

gui/<uid>/[service-name]
    Another form of the login specifier. Rather than specifying a user-login
    domain by its ASID, this specifier targets the domain based on which user it
    is associated with and is generally more convenient.

You can find out the uid number for your user account like this:

$ id -u [your-username]
502


Is there a way to change a short name in OS X I am trying change the Short Name for an account on my computer. Is there an easy way to do this?

Use these steps to change the short username of an account on your computer:

Open System Preferences
Choose the "Users & Groups" preference pane
If the padlock at the bottom left is locked, click on it to unlock it with an administrator password
Control-click on the account in the users list
A menu will appear with "Advanced Options…". Select that and you will get a sheet where you can change the account name.


Local policy error when disabling SIP on Big Sur/M1 I'm trying to disable System Integrity Protection on an M1 Mac.
csrutil disable as well as csrutil authenticated-root disable fail with an error:

csrutil: Failed to update security configuration for "Macintosh HD": Failed to create local policy

How can I avoid this failure? What is causing it?

This a brand-new Big Sur 11.0 (20A2411) on M1 MBP. FileVault is off. I'm booting into the new "Options" mode, and launching Terminal from there. Authentication is certainly OK, as I get a different error if I enter a wrong password. The user partition is accessible in this mode, I can write to /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/me/ for example.
-bash-3.2# csrutil disable
Turning off System Integrity Protection requires modifying system security.
Allow booting unsigned operating systems and any kernel extensions for OS "Macintosh HD"? [y/n]: y

Enter password for user admin:
Mounted /dev/disk3s3 at <private>
Unmounted /dev/disk3s3 ( <private> )
csrutil: Failed to update security configuration for "Macintosh HD": Failed to create local policy

I had the same problem. This worked for me.

csrutil clear
Restart and return to the recovery terminal
csrutil disable


MacBook Pro kernel panic at boot My MacBook Pro kernel-panicked with this message, "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button until it turns off, then press the power button again."

The same message appears each time I reboot.

This sounds as though your system is in a cycle of kernel panics. The first thing to do is to try starting your system in Safe Mode to clear out the system- and application caches and to rebuild the font libraries:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455

If that doesn't do it, I would next try resetting your PRAM. There may be some boot settings that have gotten messed up. To reset your PRAM, turn off your computer and then turn it on again. Immediately press command+option+p+r until you hear the start tone for a second time, then release it.

If a Safe Boot and PRAM reset don't fix things, you can next try resetting the System Management Controller (SMC). Instructions vary depending on the system, so see the following Apple article for details:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Finally, if that doesn't do it, you'll need to run Apple Diagnostics to determine whether you have a hardware fault. Again, details differ depending on the system, so see the following article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5781

Best of luck!


Hide iPad mail icon without jailbreaking I need a way to hide the mail icon on an iPad as my business the emails need to be secured. I know you can jailbreak the device and achieve it but this is not viable for me.

You can use restrictions in settings, but if you do you cannot access mail without re-enabling it.
To enable restrictions go to settings, general, restrictions and tap on enable restrictions.


What does this bogus route (0&0x68 c8.c8.c8.c8...) mean in my routing table? This is fresh after a reboot, on a wireless network which is known to be a little flaky. The first line is unlike anything I've seen before:

$ netstat -rn
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
0&0x68             c8.c8.c8.c8.c8.c8.c8.c8.c8.8.0.0.8.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.68.80.0.5.14.4.0.f.1e.3.8.1.0.7.0.0.0.b.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.7f.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.0.a8.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.10.2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.10.2.0.0.ac.13.80.1.4.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.80.0.5.14.4.0.f.1e.5.0.6.5.3.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1.8.1.0.0.0.0.0.4.0.0.0.7f.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.0.a8.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.20.7.10.51 USc             9        0     en0
default            172.19.128.1       UGSc           11        0     en0
127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0
127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH              4      155     lo0
172.19.128/20      link#4             UCS             2        0     en0
172.19.128.1       0:b:86:61:f2:70    UHLWIir        12       14     en0   1177
172.19.129.189     127.0.0.1          UHS             0        0     lo0
172.19.143.255     ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff  UHLWbI          0        6     en0

The first entry is very sticky; even taking down the network interface doesn't kill it. It isn't recognized by route delete. I need to restart the OS to get rid of it. It makes the system entirely unusable, since it causes network connections to fail:

$ telnet www.google.com 80
Trying 74.125.141.104...
telnet: connect to address 74.125.141.104: Cannot allocate memory
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

What's going on here, and how can I fix it when it happens without a reboot?

Although I couldn't reproduce it on my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.8.2), some users have reported a similar behavior, including the creation of a bogus route:

Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
(...)
128.0&0x8600  ff.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.5.ff.ff.ff.86.0.0.0.88.0.5.14.5.0.68.c.1.9.0.0.7.0. 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.7f.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.0.dc.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8d.c.5a .4f.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0. 0.0.10.2.0.0.a9.fe.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.14.12.5.0.6.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0 .6.ff.ff.ff.ff.ff.0.0.7c.0.5.14.1.0.68.c.7.8.0.0.3.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0 .0.0.0.0.7f.ff.ff.ff.0.0.0.0.0.40.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.c0.0.0.0.c0.0.0.0.0.0.0. 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.10.2.0.0.ac.1c.84 USc             0        4     en0

when putting the computer to sleep while using a VPN connection over WiFi. This doesn't seem to be your case, as you see such a route right after starting your Mac.

I can't tell you what's going wrong here, but there is a post in the link above that mentions that it could be fixed without a reboot like this:

  Turning off tcp/ip and turning it back on worked like a charm.

If you want to give it a try, open System Preferences, select the Network pane and, if necessary, click the lock icon to make changes:

Select your open connection from the list on the left hand side (Ethernet or WiFi), press the button Advanced..., select the TCP/IP tab, set Configure IPv4 to Off:

and confirm by pressing OK. Set TCP/IP back to its original setting.

Hope it helps.


Trying to convert pdf to text for free I am using OSX and would like to be able to convert pdf files to text.

I would like a free application to do this, as I am sure there must be some.

Here are the steps I used to install and use xpdf via Homebrew.

Install Homebrew's dependencies:

xcode-select --install

Install Homebrew from their website:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Do what it tells you to complete the Homebrew installation.
Verify that Homebrew is happy and functioning to spec.

brew doctor

Next install xpdf and its dependencies:

brew install Caskroom/cask/xquartz

brew install xpdf

Finally, use pdftotext, a package that comes with the xpdf suite:

pdftotext Some_Document.pdf Some_Document.txt

The first file name is an existing PDF; the second is the destination.  The results were much better than with an (admittedly old) version of Adobe Acrobat. Edit: New (2019) versions of Adobe Acrobat have shown similarly poor results.


How to find the corresponding configuration files of php? I know the php's version and binary locate, but how can I found its configuration files? such as php.ini.

aircrafts-MacBook-Pro:local ldl$ php -v
PHP 5.6.30 (cli) (built: Oct 29 2017 20:30:32)
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
aircrafts-MacBook-Pro:local ldl$ whereis php
/usr/bin/php

if there are several php installed in my Mac, how can I find the corresponding one?

Run the following command from the Terminal:

/usr/bin/php -i |grep 'Configuration File'

This will tell you the path where it looks after php.ini, and the name of the loaded configuration file (if no php.ini exists where it looks for it, none might be loaded).

Change the path /usr/bin/php to the php you want to check when you have multiple versions of PHP installed.


Answer a phone call from iPhone screen with airpods in without disconnection from airpods Sometimes my Airpods do not respond to my taps, so I have gotten into the habit of answering phone calls from the iPhone screen if a call comes in while I am wearing the Airpods. However, if I answer from the phone, the device seems to think I want to talk through the phone itself, and automatically disconnects me from the Airpods. I have to then press the  "Speaker" button, and then choose my Airpods from the list, and only then am I able to talk through the Airpods.

My question is, is it possible to answer the phone from the screen while the Airpods are connected without being disconnected? With the wired Apple earphones, this does not happen. I.e., if you have them plugged in and answer a call, the earphones are not suddenly bypassed for the device speaker and mic. If this is not a bug, I am sure Apple has their reasons for this behavior, but I wonder if there is a workaround or a setting I can tweak. Thanks!

Apple assumes that wherever you answer from is where you want to hear the audio.

The fact that your AirPods are unresponsive to your taps is a separate issue (maybe Apple will address in future updates). The expected behavior is that if you want to answer on your AirPods, you'll tap on them.


Lion iCal calendar event shows up as grey rather than colour of calendar it belongs to I have an item in iCal that shows in grey rather than the (blue) colour of the calendar it belongs to.

It also has an interrupted border rather than a flawless border.

What does that mean?

Update: It shows up in the correct colour (blue) on the Web interface.

If someone has sent you an invite and you have responded "Maybe", the Event will show up as described.


Restoring from Yosemite Time Machine backup on Mavericks Is it possible to restore a Yosemite backup to Mavericks? I downgraded and want to access my most recent restore, or else I'll have to use the Mavericks one from a month ago.

I am on a Macbook Pro 13-inch mid-2011.

It's unlikely that this will work - and any software that was updated will probably not understand its settings file (e.g. Mail, Messages and the like). Also, restoring everything would replace system files with Yosemite versions.

You could go into Time Machine and pull out documents and content you have created/updated while running Yosemite, and that should work OK. But restoring settings and the system is highly unlikely to end happily.

Definitely not recommended.


On OS X in Safari, how to speed up or bypass the transition/animation in the 2-finger swipe to go back? I like using this feature, but it's too slow for me now and I'm finding myself hitting the Delete key now because its faster. The Delete key doesn't animate the previous page in, it just goes back right away.

How can I speed up the swipe back animation, or skip it all together?

I'm using 10.10 (Yosemite).

I realized I could user Better Touch Tool to do what I need. So, I'll post it as a work around.

In the Trackpad preferences, disable the Swipe between pages option.

In Better Touch Tool, add a trackpad gesture for Two Finger Swipe Right (I use natural scrolling) and associate it with the 3F Swipe Left (Page Back) action.

I also added a gesture for swiping left for page forward.


Can apps purchased for iPad be downloaded on MacBook I purchased the iA Writer app for my iPad. Can I download it free on my MacBook?

Thanks.

You can download it, for the purposes of backup/syncing etc with iOS devices via iTunes, but it is not an OS X application so it will not run.  Some companies release software for both platforms, often with the same name/version number/price point, but they are separate applications, and when you buy you are purchasing on a platform specific basis, so even if you own iA Writer (or Byword, or any other cross platform app) you only own it on the platform for which it was purchased.


Force macbook to sleep when lid closed and external monitor connected in Lion I know you have heard this before, but is there any app/hack that makes the computer behave like Snow Leopard when closing the lid?

I don't want to hear about this being a duplicate question, as I want a solution not an explanation.

Only post here if you have a solution that makes the macbook behave like in Snow Leopard when closing the lid.

This worked in 10.7 and 10.8 with my MacBook Air:

sudo nvram boot-args=iog=0x0

After restarting, it should restore the pre-10.7 behavior:

Closing the lid puts a laptop to sleep even when it is connected to an external display
If you then wake the laptop up and open the lid, the internal display doesn't turn on

To undo it, run sudo nvram -d boot-args or hold ⌥⌘PR on startup.


Is there an app that will let me edit track information (title/artist)? I wonder if is there any app for the iOS 5 that will let me edit the artist or title of my music?

The music is currently synced through iTunes and stored in the music app, but please let me know if there are any alternatives. I am open to jail breaking the device if there are no other alternatives.

Given the rather strict sandboxing applied in iOS this is most probably impossible to achieve without jailbraking the device.


Disable SubmitDiagInfo This "phoning home" reporting is something I would like to completely disable.

How can I make sure I never see this dialog again and no info is sent to Apple?

Going to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage and unchecking Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple did not work for me. I still get the Little Snitch dialog asking for permission to connect to radarsubmissions.apple.com.

It seems the connection attempt is triggered by a launchd job located at /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DiagnosticReportCleanUp.plist. On Mountain Lion 10.8.4, it's set up to run every day at 11 am. If I clear the Little Snitch rules for the SubmitDiagInfo process and run the following command to start the launchd job sudo launchctl start com.apple.DiagnosticReportCleanUp, the Little Snitch connection dialog pops up.

This seems to be a bug as the DiagnosticReportCleanUp job is not respecting the Privacy setting in System Preferences. I've denied the connection attempt Forever in Little Snitch for now. Hopefully, this gets fixed in OS X 10.9 Mavericks.


how to draw good safari button icons? I have created a safari extension with tool button icon of 64x64 pixels. its not as crisp as the safari buttons. I have tried higher resolutions and lower resolutions which are rendered worse than 64x64 size.

In below image notice how my custom tab switch icon on the left differ with the safari's on the right.

the difference is much clearer on an low res external monitor

How to make crispier and darker images like that of the default safari buttons?

As suggested by @jefe2000, it was a problem with alignment.  I was able to create a good icon with 17x17 pixels rather than 16x16 pixels as suggested by Apple in the Safari Extensions Development Guide.


Disk won't mount Microsoft Basic Data I have an external disk that won't mount on my Mac:

/dev/disk6 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk6
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk6s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS                         2.0 TB     disk6s2

When I first got the disk (from a colleague) it would not mount. I saw that /dev/disk6s2 was set to Microsoft Basic Data so I assumed that was the problem. I ran sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk6s2 --settype "Apple_HFS" to fix that and now (as seen above) disk6s2 is set to Apple_HFS but it still won't mount.

The output of sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk6 is:

      start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640        2008
      411648  3906617344      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  3907028992         143
  3907029135          32         Sec GPT table
  3907029167           1         Sec GPT header

I don't see any problems there but I'm getting into areas I'm not fully familiar with. I have no reason to think nor have I noticed any physical problems with the disk itself.

Any suggested steps or diagnoses?

MacPro (late 2013) OSX 10.11.6

The asr target option --settype "Apple_HFS" modifies the GPT partition type but not the file system. So the partition "content" is 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (which is an indicator for a normal HFS+ partition) but the file system on disk6s2 still is NTFS/ExFAT/FAT32.

If the disk is empty, simply erase it with Disk Utility to whatever you need.

Changing the partition "content" with gpt or another similar tool doesn't alter the file system. Your volume may not mount if content and file system don't match!

BTW asr is not the proper tool to format volumes, create file systems or to change the partition type. This is rather done with newfs_XY, diskutil and gpt.

To determine or examine the file system you would have to open the volume as raw data and check for specific headers or fs structures.


launchctl error "nothing found to load" when run via cron On OS X 10.9, I'm running a script (e.g., ~/bin/run.sh) via my user crontab (added using crontab -e). This script, under some specific conditions (not related to this question), will run the following command to launch a menubar application:

launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist

When I run this command (either ~/bin/run.sh or the launchctl statement above directly) from the command line normally, the menubar item launches fine.

When this command is run via crontab (again, directly or via ~/bin/run.sh), I receive the message nothing found to load in the cron output (in my mail).

Question: why does this fail when run via cron but not when run on the command line?

I have tried executing it via cron in the simplest way possible:

* * * * * launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist

This doesn't work (I get nothing found to load).

I have tried emulating the cron environment:

Capturing the cron environment by having this execute in cron:

env > ~/cronenv

Then opening a shell with this environment:

env - `cat ~/cronenv` /bin/sh

And finally running the command:

launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist

It runs find in these conditions (I wouldn't expect it to, if something in the cron environment is the culprit).

I have tried running it from crontab as sudo. Nope (nothing found to load).

I have tried running it from crontab with launchctl load -F and launchctl load -w. No luck (nothing found to load).

Permissions on the plist file are:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  561 Apr 13 20:55 /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist

What's going on?

(BTW, I know it may seem silly to run a script with a launchctl job from within cron, but because it is run within a shell script it's prevented from being a 100% launchctl-controlled process.)

Update: as requested here is the script that is being run (I've been calling it ~/bin/run.sh), the line in question being #29, and here is the contents of the plist.

Update: the specific solution that works for me, based on @mateusz-szlosek's suggestion to use bsexec, looks like this:

sudo launchctl bsexec "$(ps -axwww | grep Dock | grep -v grep | awk {'print $1'};)" sudo -u $USER launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.opendns.osx.RoamingClientMenubar.plist

The first sudo is required otherwise the error Couldn't switch to new bootstrap port occurs. The second sudo is to execute launchctl as $USER. The first argument to bsexec is a parent process ID who's context will be used to launch the new process. $(ps -axwww | grep Dock | grep -v grep | awk {'print $1'};) returns the pid of the Dock process, which loads somewhat early in the launchd hierarchy, but under user context.

The problem is execution context and mach bootstrap in OS X (more info on Apple documentation worth reading). You need to simulate execution from proper context. In OS X it's done using launchctl bsexec command. From TheDarkKnight's answer to Starting/stopping a launchd agent for all users with GUI sessions you have:

  Unload Agents

#!/bin/bash
for id in `ps aux | grep -v grep | grep MyAgent | awk {'print $2'}`
do
    launchctl bsexec $id launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/myAgent.plist
done

  Replace MyAgent with the name of your Launch Agent.

  Load Agents

#!/bin/bash
for pid_uid in $(ps -axo pid,uid,args | grep -i "[l]oginwindow.app" | awk '{print $1 "," $2}'); do

    pid=$(echo $pid_uid | cut -d, -f1)
    uid=$(echo $pid_uid | cut -d, -f2)

    launchctl bsexec "$pid" chroot -u "$uid" / launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/myAgent.plist
done

On OS X 10.11 and Later

From the comment by vrrathod about OS X 10.11, El Capitain, use:

launchctl bootstrap gui/$uid /Library/LaunchAgents/myAgent.plist


Can I watch a video on my Mac but have the audio go through my iPhone? I would like to get the sound from my MacBook Pro to play on my iPhone. For example if I watch a video on my Mac I would be able to view it on my Mac but get the audio through my iPhone. Is this possible?

Yes, you can do it.

You need to be on the same WiFi network and use a pair of matched applications on your Mac and iPhone.

The best known of these are Airfoil (for the Mac) and Airfoil Speakers Touch on your iPhone. See this: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

Note that Airfoil Speakers Touch does not turn your iPhone into Airplay speakers so you can only stream to it from a computer running Airfoil and not, for example, your iPad.


How can I print in colour from mac book air when olivetti printer defaults is set to print mono We have just one Mac user in the office. Everyone else is on HP Pro. Our Olivetti MF2400 is set to print in mono which is fine for HP users as we can choose colour from the file drop down however, there does not seem to be such an option on the mac book air.

Any advice?

Thanks
G

For this answer, I am assuming that you are using a relatively newer version of OS X on your Mac and at least Windows 7 for the HP Pros.

This is a driver issue.  The only thing that can override a default value is a user setting on a driver.  I went to the Olivetti MF 2400 support site and found these drivers:

If you notice, there are two MacOSX drivers that are "PS Mono;"  that's Post Script Monochrome.  I suspect you are using one of those drivers.  Try downloading and using the "PS" version of the driver (the second one being that it is for 10.6 which is the version of OS X that only supported the Intel CPU and not the PowerPC.

That said, this is a discontinued printer and finding drivers may become much more difficult as time progresses.  You may be able to extend its useful life by sharing this printer (via CUPS in Linux/Unix) and emulating something a bit more generic like an HP Color Jet.  It's not the cleanest solution, but if you just want basic color printing, it will probably get the job done.


'script' command in terminal, looking for a flush open When I use 'script' on a unix terminal the -f option flushes the data straight to the file - from the man page "-f      Flush output after each write. This is nice for telecooperation: One person does mkfifo foo; script -f foo' and another can
             supervise real-time what is being done usingcat foo'."

This is a really handy option for me - but the version of the script command on my mac appears to be lacking this option. Are there any ways I can achieve the functionality?

You can achieve more or less the same result by running

script -t 0

From the man page:

-t time  Specify time interval between flushing script output file.
         A value of 0 causes script to flush for every
         character I/O event.  The default interval is 30 seconds.


How can I disable Auto-Lock on iPadOS 13? I don't have the "never" option in Settings -> Display & Rrightness -> Auto-Lock.

I faced this same issue on an iPhone few months ago.
Why this happens ?
When you link a device to a corporate email address, the Auto-Lock setting can sometimes be restricted by the corporation for security reasons, so that people cannot access the device if the user unintentionally forget to lock it.
Depending of the company preferences and device concerned — it may vary between 30 seconds and Never as maximum time of inactivity on the device.
Example
If the company set the maximum inactivity setting to 15 minutes : the Never option will not be shown (as it is the case in the photo you posted).


Terminal: grep recursive - don't search in symlink contents When searching with grep -r, it avoids following symbolic links by default. This is true for directories, but grep still inspects the contents of files that are symlinks.

For instance, if I have a framework with the following structure:

+-- MyFancy.framework
    +-- MyFancy              (symlink to ./Versions/A/MyFancy)
    +-- Versions
        +-- A
            +-- MyFancy      (the actual binary file)
        +-- Current
            +-- MyFancy      (symlink to ../A/MyFancy)

grep -r "string" MyFancy.framework prints:

Binary file ./MyFancy matches
Binary file ./Versions/A/MyFancy matches
Binary file ./Versions/Current/MyFancy matches

This causes the search in such structures three times slower.

How can I make grep exclude symlinks?

If you look at the man page for grep, there is no option to exclude symlinks, and therefore an alternative method will need to be applied. One such method is to use find to output only file pathnames using the -type t option, where t is set to f for regular file.

Example:

 find . -type f -exec grep -l 'search' {} \;

Where 'search' is whatever you're greping for, and the output will be the relative path filename of the file(s) containing it because of using -l with grep.

In the example above, grep will be executed for each relative path filename that find passes to -exec. As grep can handle multiple filenames, you can change the ;, at the end of the command, to + to tell find to pass all the matching filenames to grep at once. Note that if the number of matching filenames is large, then the allowable length of the command line could be exceeded.

Also note that find has a rather large set of options, and as such you may be able to narrow down the output passed grep, depending on your needs.


iBooks margin is a waste of screen space On my 7.9" iPad Mini Retina, I'd like to use the full screen to shown content. Currently, the iBooks app simply wastes too much screen space on left/right margins.

Is there an alternative for reading ePUBs, say, to have an option to define margin size?

Open up the Settings app > iBooks > Full Justification


Shared Internet apply /etc/hosts How do I make those who connect to me via a shared internet connection use my /etc/hosts file? I was thinking something along the lines of creating a DNS server, but I was hoping maybe there is a simpler solution?

You will need to install a DNS server. If you need a DNS server that automatically synthesizes answers from the contents of /etc/hosts, use dnsmasq.


I can't find 'Add all tracks' in the add to playlist section in iOS 7 With iOS 7 the "Add all tracks" option, when selecting a playlist, seems to have vanished.
Now the user has to select each song in the playlist individually, which can be very tedious with a long playlist.

How can I get back the "Add all tracks" option?

After contacting a local Apple Store, I was informed that, the feature "Add all tracks" used in the playlist has been removed, and now you have to manually add each song or use iTunes to make the Playlist !!


Audio Distortion After 2 Minutes of Music in Stock MBP I have a MBP (13 inch early 2015, running 10.11.4) which after about 2 minutes of producing audio (Skype, Youtube from Firefox, iTunes...) via either the internal speakers or a pair of earbuds starts producing crackling distorted sound. Stopping the music and restarting also restarts the time-to-crackle.

I am unsure how long this has been happening, but there are no USB, Thunderbolt devices, or even the power charge connected as mentioned in this question.

Unlike this question this is a stock machine.

The machine has not been through any physical abuse/drops.

Is this likely to be resolvable as a software problem, or do I need to visit the Apple store for hardware help?

I was experiencing the same issue and was about ready to buy a new set of headphones until I plugged them into my phone and the issue went away.

I rebooted my Mac and let all the programs fully load before closing anything. That seems to have fixed the issue.


Clean up the InstallerSandboxes directory I have the usual problem, the disk of my macbook is full. I have tried what people say, like empty the bin, restart in safe mode but none of that works. So I've ran a perl script with sudo which adds up file sizes and I found that the InstallerSandboxes folder is eating up most of my space. (It can be found on multiple locations, I suppose it's hardlinked.) It has a .PKInstallSandboxManager subdirectory which contains 4 subdirectories with names in format: SOME-UUID.activeSandbox they all have huge sizes: 16.42 GB, 18.72 GB, 18.76 GB and 29.27 GB, that adds up to 83.19 GB. All of them contain a Root/Application/Xcode.app so I suppose they are all related to Xcode which is installed and I have an /Application/Xcode.app too. I don't suppose all 4 of them is in use, how can I get rid of the three that is not in use?

I've originally added the question because I didn't have enough space to update XCode. I ended up removing then reinstalling it. But things have gotten worse, last time I uninstalled it and then I got the error that I can't reinstall it because there isn't enough space. So desperate times call for desperate measures, I have deleted the 4 directories mentioned in the question which gave me 30GB extra space. I did it with sudo an mc and mc reported it deleted around 1400000 files, it's ridiculous! So then I could reinstall XCode and it seems to be working without problems.
Edit:
To free up additional space go to About This Mac > Storage > Manage > Developer. In there XCode Caches was 15Gb on my computer. You can delete it and the next time XCode runs it will recreate some of it but only a couple GBs.