Category Archives: OS X

OS X: Go to (certain) Pref-Panes fast

Did you know that there is a shortcut to open certain panes in System Preferences in OS X?
If you want to open the Sound-Pane in System Preferences then try this key combination:
⌥ – any of the keycaps to modify the volume on your Mac
The same goes for the Monitors-Pane:
⌥ – keycap to increase or decrease [...]

Tip: Launching Dashboard via AppleScript

Just a short tip: Your Dashboard in OS X contains up to the minute information about things that are of interest to you, right? I use a script to launch iTunes and Mail in the morning while making coffee, the other thing I launch every morning is the Dashboard to get an overview of things [...]

OS X: Daylight Savings Time switch and launchd

The end of the Daylight Time is near, this year, the switch takes place on November 2nd, to be precise. Usually no biggie, but Europe switched back last weekend and I switched a couple of jobs from cron to launchd, as prescribed by Apple, during the year on servers located in Europe.
cron, the one available [...]

OS X Server: Reset diradmin’s Password

The admin-password does not work with the diradmin-account? First things first:

Don’t panic!
There might be a way out of this.

What happened?
The passwords for the administrative account on OS X Server, I’m talking about the one created during installation, and the diradmin-account are the same, right? Are you sure? They probably are, if you didn’t change one [...]

OS X: Capturing Packets

Being kind of “Solaris-infested” at times (a.k.a. old habits die hard), I had a hard time capturing network-packets on OS X the other day. Not the capturing in itself, but remembering to use tcpdump instead of snoop. The command I was looking for was
sudo tcpdump host [ip-address]
It lists the packets as they go by, regardless [...]

OS X: The Location for “Folder Action Scripts”

Since it bit me a couple of days ago: The AppleScripts to be used as Folder Actions must be stored in ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts or /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts.
The former is the location for Scripts available to the user of the account, the latter for all users of a machine. Don’t get fooled by the fact [...]

OS X: Repairing Permissions from the Command-Line

Just a quick tip: Repairing the permissions on an OS X disk can be done from the command-line as well. The only caveat, you have to know the device of the volume. Getting the right device is easy:
diskutil list
The device-node in question is in the column titled IDENTIFIER. The device-path to use is the one [...]

OS X: Getting Image-Dimensions on the Command-Line (sips)

If you need to get the dimensions of an image-file via the command-line, let’s say in a script or an AppleScript, then there is a way to do so easily. Enter the scriptable image processing system or short sips. You didn’t know you got that installed on your OS X system alreay? Me neither.
Assume, that [...]

MySQL-Endcoding on OS X Server 10.5.X

Just a quick hint for all the commandline-jockeys: The standard-encoding for new MySQL-Databases on OS X Server 10.5.X is not UTF-8 but latin1.
Do not forget to specify the encoding when creating a new database, seriously. I suspect, that this depends on the language the system is installed in. The system that tricked me was using [...]

My DocBook-Bundle for TextMate

OK, here it is. The TextMate DocBook-bundle (click the link to download) I’m using for production.
The emphasis is on I’m using. The bundle contains the entities I need for my daily work. Means, it does not contain all entities which can be used writing books and articles in DocBook. There are no templates, since I’m [...]