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CUPS is the name of the service that handles printing in Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.5. It has a lot of features that aren’t really pushed in the GUI in Mac OS X, but users are able to get at those features by using the special administrative interface at http://localhost:631/. One of those features is classes. A class, in this context, is a group of printers that can be made to look as if it were one printer. This is great in lab settings where you have half a dozen printers of the same type as you can add them all to a class on a print server and have everyone print to that queue. Then whichever printer is free (or round-robin) will print the job. There's more » I went to the GUI feedback session at WWDC last year and in the midst of all the yelling and screaming over the new dock and menu bar there was one guy with a wholly different mission: be able to turn off tooltips. His complaint (a valid one, I feel) is that every time he wants to sit and think about what’s on-screen, a little yellow box comes up where the mouse is, and there’s no real “safe spot” for the mouse that doesn’t do this in most applications. So, I present a little tip I discovered shortly afterwards and appear to have not written up. I dedicate this to Tooltip Guy, wherever he is. defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay 99999 You now have 99.999 seconds to think at a given time. Replace So I’m paranoid, but not THAT paranoid. Sometimes I feel like using “Secure Empty Trash”, but that uses ’/usr/bin/srm’ with the ’-m’ option (7 passes), which can take a while to complete. Most of the time, I only care about what might turn up with simple file recovery tools in case my drive gets stolen (as opposed to covering my tracks from say law enforcement or a foreign government) so really, a single pass should be plenty for my needs. I could always use ’srm’ directly, but the convenience the built-in tool offers in handling the Trashes on various volumes, and having a built-in menu item is nice. It turns out the ’srm’ option used by “Secure Empty Trash” in Tiger is specified in the file: There's more » /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Resources/Locum How can I completly disable the Finger Service? Instead of manually creating .nofinger files on each user Home folder. Thanks! It’s a question we get every now and again that simply doesn’t have an easy answer: “How do I add items to the Login Items from the Terminal?” Well, that’s hard, and mainly because the ==$ defaults write foo test -array-add -dict Hide 1 Path /Applications/TextEdit.app There's more » One of the great dillemas of Mac admins is how to give users the ability to actually USE their machines, without the monkeys gumming up the works constantly. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Open Directory. But what if you don’t have an Open Directory server? Create a Power Users group. It gives users the ability to install the applications they want, without letting them modify things like network settings. Working off of this tip from Mac OS X Hints, I created this method: There's more »
Hello. I have this 12” G4 iBook and the trackpad button is broken. Specifically it appears to be stuck on “click”. I looked at what it takes to replace and it seems I’d need to replace the entire upper-case of the iBook. As a compromise I’m prepared to plug in and use an external USB mouse and use the option to ignore trackpad when external mouse is present. But here’s my problem – I can’t use an external mouse yet because that also can’t click because the trackpad click won’t ever finish and unregister and allow another device a click. So if I could set the Keyboard & Mouse Trackpad option ‘Ignore trackpad when mouse is present’ using the terminal (which I can launch using Spotlight) this iBook would become a useable system again. (In case you’re wondering I’m typing this from my MacBook and the iBook belongs to my son who recently broke the trackpad clicker during a bout of computer rage. I haven’t quite worked out what drove him so mad, OS X is usually so serene!) For those of you that didn’t know (and it’s an honest omission of knowledge) Apple’s Installer and Software Update tools have CLI tools that do their dirty work for them, and you can use them to remotely administer your machine (or do so more directly than the GUI lets you). The Installer’s CLI command is, shockingly, $ installer -pkg GoshIHopeItsNotATrojan.pkg -target / You can also have a little fun with it with its myriad options. Software Update is similarly called $ softwareupdate -l Or install all pending updates with: There's more » $ sudo softwareupdate -i -a Hi there. I have just been given a belkin wireless optical desktop kit. It is great, bar the fact that is PC. Surprisingly most things work, but I was wondering if there was a way to remap certain keys, ie: swap the windows key and the alt key around, and get a few more of the extra media buttons working. I have a 400mhz G4 running OSX10.3.9. As an admin, sometimes you want to tweak the dock a bit when you can’t sit at the Mac or VNC in to it. Luckily, the Dock is governed by a plist that’s a bit cryptic, but is otherwise fairly easy to tweak. I used this quite a bit, back in the day, but when a friend asked me for it recently, I had to dig around quite a bit to find the darn thing. There's more » |