Tips on Filesystems, security and al on mac os x

Laurent Perrinet

2009-08-29 13:36

mount with AFP sharepoints from the command line (thanks to this hint) :

# mount_afp [-i] [-o options] afp_url node
mkdir /Volumes/truc
mount_afp afp://user:PASSWORD@server/truc /Volumes/truc
umount /Volumes/truc
rmdir /Volumes/truc

finder nags when changing a file's extension

read the default value (should be 0)

defaults read com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning

change it:

defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning False

Make spell check show only desired languages

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090512175846504

HFS+

Mac OS X Filesystems
One feature of HFS volumes is that fle are referred to as links: for instance you can read a PDF file while changing the name at the same time. No problem!
Safely remove '._' files created by HFS(+)
```
find . -name '._*' -print0 | xargs -0 rm
```

Spotlight

to remove the remaining index files on the volume using the command: `` sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/volume_name `` utilitaires CLI :

sudo mdutil --help
mdutil: unrecognized option `--help'
usage: mdutil -pE volume ...
        mdutil can be used to manage the metadata stores used by Spotlight.
        -p              publish metadata for the provided volumes.
        -i (on|off)     set indexing status for the provided volumes.
        -E              erase the master copy of the metadata stores for the provided volumes.
        -s              print indexing status for the provided volumes.

System & Security

http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/security/basic_mac_os_x_security

Synthesis of unauthorized accesses to your machine:

sudo grep "failed to auth" /var/log/secure.log | sed 's/^.*user \(.*\) for.*$/\1/' | sort | uniq -c

nmap

to scan for open ports on a remote machine :

sudo nmap -T3 -vv -sS -p 1-65535 -P0 google.com
Starting nmap 3.81 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-04-05 16:32 CEST
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan against google.com [65535 ports] at 16:32
Discovered open port 80/tcp on google.com
SYN Stealth Scan Timing: About 2.18% done; ETC: 16:55 (0:22:26 remaining)

to scan for open ports on your local network (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13669585/how-to-get-a-list-of-all-valid-ip-addresses-in-a-local-network#15351073 ):
```
nmap -sP 192.168.1.*
```

Dash board

Don't use Dashboard? No particular reason to leave it running, consuming memory. Following http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050723123302403, you can turn Dashboard off by doing:
```
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
killall Dock
```

Unsurprisingly, you change YES to NO to re-enable Dashboard:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
killall Dock

Unix - X11

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/

install quickly http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz :

wget http://xquartz.macosforge.org/downloads/X11-2.4.0.dmg
sudo installer -pkg X11-2.4.0.pkg  -target /
rm  X11-2.4.0.pkg

Change login window on (Snow) Leopard

disrupted by the look of the plasma flames? think it looks like a cheap star trek sundae? check http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/10/31/how-to-change-leopards-login-wallpaper :

cd /System/Library/CoreServices
sudo rm DefaultDesktop.jpg
#sudo mv DefaultDesktop.jpg DefaultDesktop_old.jpg # if you want to keep the Aurora stuff (it stills around, do a 'locate Aurora'
sudo ln -s /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Nature/Stones.jpg DefaultDesktop.jpg