Mac Stuff

Spotlight is the Macintosh technology that lets you search for things on your Mac. When you search for something like “dog” it not only finds that letter combination in the names of files but searchs the contents of the files for that term as well.

Occasionally Spotlight goes a little nuts and does things like continuously indexing your entire machine, which can slow things down. A good fix for this problem is to simply delete the Spotlight index and let it recreate itself. This can also fix problems where things aren’t showing up in a search that you know are there. The tool we use to do this is a command line tool called mdutil

To delete a Spotlight index enter the following in Terminal. Spotlight will automatically begin to rebuild the index.

sudo mdutil -E volume_name

If you only have one hard drive or partition on your machine or you want to rebuild the index on the drive you’re booted from use this syntax:

sudo mdutil -E /

If you want to rebuild the index on a different drive then your boot drive use this syntax. We’ll assume the drive is name “Extra Stuff”:

sudo mdutil-E "/Volumes/Extra Stuff"

If, for some reason, you find you need to completely turn off Spotlight use this command.

sudo mdutil -i on/off volume_name

To turn off Spotlight indexing on your boot volume use this syntax:

sudo mdutil -i off /

webmaster :: Sep.28.2007 :: System, Terminal :: 2 Comments »

What is an Internet-enabled disk image?

Basically, an internet-enabled disk image is a standard .dmg file with one small change. When it is downloaded using a browser it will automatically decompress the image, put the application or folder on the desktop, unmount and remove the disk image file. This way users don’t have to deal with downloading an image, double-clicking on it, dragging out the files, etc. It’s all done in one fell swoop.

How do I make my images internet-enabled?

First you have to create a disk image. There are lots of tutorials out there on how to do this (it’s quite easy). There are also a few applications that will do it for you, such as DropDMG. Apple even has an Automator action that will do this for you.

Once you’ve created your disk image fire up Terminal and use the hdiutil utility. The option we want is internet-enable -yes.

So, if I have a disk image on our desktop named myapp.dmg I would use the following syntax:

hdiutil internet-enable -yes /Path/to/image/myapp.dmg

Since I find myself creating these files a lot for installer packages I’ve found an easier way. Paste this text into Script Editor and save it as an application. It will create a droplet. Then just drag and drop your disk image file on the droplet and it will be instantly internet-enabled!

[codesyntax lang=”applescript” lines=”no”]
on open theFile
tell application “Finder”
set theNamePath to (theFile as text)
set theName to the name of the file theNamePath
end tell
set thePath to the quoted form of the POSIX path of theFile
try
do shell script “/usr/bin/hdiutil internet-enable -yes ” & thePath
display dialog “The disk image ” & (ASCII character 34) & theName & (ASCII character 34)¬
& ” has been successfully internet-enabled!”
on error errmsg
display dialog “Oops! This error occured: ” & return & return & ¬
errmsg buttons {“OK”} default button 1
end try
end open
[/codesyntax]

admin :: May.30.2007 :: Applescript, Management, Terminal :: Comments Off on Creating Internet-enabled Disk images

Using the Printer Setup Utility in OS X is a very easy and simple way to create printers on a Mac. But occasionally you might have need to create printers at the command line. For example, you might want to create printers on remote machines that only have shell access. Or you might want to add the ability to create printers to a login script or a script that runs after a machine is re-imaged.

Well, the command to do this is lpadmin. lpadmin is used mainly to set up network printers. It’s the command line utility for CUPS, the underlying printing architecture of OS X. As usual you can type man lpadmin to get all the gory details. In this post I’m going to cover how to create a printer and how to delete one using Terminal and lpd.

Creating a new printer

The syntax to create a new printer is:

/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p "name of printer" -E -v lpd://"printer IP or DNS"/"queue name" -P "path to PPD file" -D "description"

The name of the printer is whatever you want the user to see, such as “color laser printer”. Just remember if your name has spaces in it you’ll either need to escape the spaces or quote the name. Also, the name cannot contain any non-printable characters (ex. % $ &). The description field, however, can. If you use the description field that is the name that appears in Printer Setup Utility. If you don’t then the name given in the - p flag will be the name.

All of the standard PPD files on a Mac are kept in /Library/Printers/PPD/Contents/Resources/en.lprog/. The actual PPD file will be contained in a .gz file. You just need to point to that file.

So, for our example we’ll set up a printer with the following attributes:

Name: Color_Laser
Type: HP Color Laser 4700
Print server: print.example.com
print queue: color_laser
description: Color Laser (Front Office)

So our command in the Terminal would be this:

usr/sbin/lpadmin -p Color_Laser -E -v lpd://print.example.com/color_laser -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/HP\ Color\ LaserJet\ 4700.gz -D "Color Laser (Front Office)"

Note that I quoted the “Color Laser (Front Office)” part to get around spaces in the name. That’s the name that appears in Printer Setup Utility.

Deleting a Printer

Deleting a printer is much easier. All you need is the name.

The syntax to delete a printer is:

/usr/sbin/lpadmin -x "name of printer"

If I wanted to delete the printer I just created all I would need to do is this:

/usr/sbin/lpadmin -x "Color Laser"

Note: The name you’re deleting is the name you gave it in the - p flag, not the description. So putting “Color Laser (Front Office)” in this would not work.

If you’ve forgotten what names you gave the printers open up a web browser on your machine and enter “http://127.0.0.1:631/printers”. That will take you to the configuration page for CUPS, which will list the printers by name.

Creating printers in AppleScript

You can wrap all of these commands up in an AppleScript and send it to users so they can install printers with just a click. Just wrap the commands in a do shell script command.

The one gotcha is because you are using quotes in the Terminal command AND you have to quote to actual command in AppleScript you have to escape the internal quotes by putting a “\” before each quote. You also have to escape and “escapes” you had in the original command.

To compare, here is the original command:

/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p "Color_Laser" -E -v lpd://print.example.com/color_laser -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/HP\ Color\ LaserJet\ 4700.gz -D "Color Laser (Front Office)"

And here is the command with the “do shell script” command in AppleScript:

[codesyntax lang=”applescript” lines=”no”]do shell script “/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p Color_Laser -E -v lpd://print.example.com/color_laser -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/HP\\ Color\\ LaserJet\\ 4700.gz -D \”Color Laser (Front Office)\””[/codesyntax]

admin :: Apr.20.2007 :: Applescript, Management, Scripts, shell scripts, Terminal :: 2 Comments »

Norton AntiVirus (now Symantec AntiVirus) is not, out of the box, able to automatically update it’s virus definitions or it’s application when running on a Macintosh. Symantec has posted two articles that, when put together, let you have all of your Macs update in the dead of night while they are logged out. I’ve been using this technique on all of the Macs in my computer labs for over a year with great success.

The two articles are Running LiveUpdate using UNIX commands and Scheduling LiveUpdate for all users using UNIX commands.

Putting the information from these two articles together you can set up your Macs to auto-update using this procedure.

We’re going to set up a root-level cron job to run a command to update the things we need. I like to have it run around 3 AM. If you don’t know how to do it at the command line use Cronnix and edit the System cron job.

First we’ll cover the basic flag options you have.

-liveupdatequiet

If you don’t want that annoying LiveUpdate window to pop up (especially since you’re logged out) you need the -liveupdatequiet YES flag. If you do want it to show then leave this flag out.

The default action is to show it. However, if you are running this when the machine is logged out you could come in the next morning to a lot of machines with the LiveUpdate window showing behind the login window.

-liveupdateautoquit

If you want LiveUpdate to automatically quit when it’s done use the -liveupdateautoquit YES flag.

I’m not sure why you WOULDN’T want it to quit when it’s done.

Update options

To tell LiveUpdate what to update you have to choose from these options with the -update flag.

LUal = All Symantec products
LUdf = Norton AntiVirus virus definition updates
LUlu = LiveUpdate
LUna = Norton AntiVirus

Putting it all together

So, putting this all together, an example command to silently update the virus definitions would look like this. Watch out for line wraps. This should all be on one line:

/Applications/Symantec\ Solutions/LiveUpdate.app/Contents/MacOS/LiveUpdate -update LUdf
-liveupdatequiet YES -liveupdateautoquit YES

Things to watch out for

One “gotcha” to look out for. Symantec changed the name of the folder that holds LiveUpdate between versions 9 and 10. So, the above example will work in version 10. To have it work in version 9 use this path:

/Applications/Norton\ Solutions/LiveUpdate.app/Contents/MacOS/LiveUpdate

A second thing to watch out for is when you use the LUal option. If the actual AntiVirus or LiveUpdate applications get updated you’ll need to restart the machine. Norton will give your users an error message when they log in if the machine hasn’t been rebooted since the update.

For that reason I only update the virus definitions this way. When the actual applications need updating I run the command using the LUal flag using Apple Remote Desktop’s “Run UNIX command” function on all the machines at once and then restart them.

admin :: Mar.29.2007 :: Management, System, Terminal :: Comments Off on Making Symantec (Norton) AntiVirus update when logged out

There are times when you may need to get information about your system via the command line. Perhaps for a shell script or you’re already working in Terminal and it’s just quicker then opening the GUI version of System Profiler.

The command line version of System Profiler is, appropriately enough, “system_profiler”.

You can type man system_profiler to get a list of all the many things it can do. Here are a few examples.

You can get three different levels of reports.

• system_profiler -detailLevel mini gives you a report without personal information
• system_profiler -detailLevel basic gives you hardware and network information only
• system_profiler -detailLevel full gives you everything

system_profiler -xml will export everything to an XML file for use in a web page or database. You can combine this command with others to get only certain information

For example, to get only the hardware and network information on a certain machine and write it to an XML file you can use this:

system_profiler -xml -detaiLevel basic > /Users/myaccount/Desktop/report.xml

Enter system_profiler -listDataTypes to get a list of the different areas that system_profiler gathers data on.

Those types are:

SPHardwareDataType
SPNetworkDataType
SPSoftwareDataType
SPParallelATADataType
SPAudioDataType
SPBluetoothDataType
SPDiagnosticsDataType
SPDiscBurningDataType
SPFibreChannelDataType
SPFireWireDataType
SPDisplaysDataType
SPMemoryDataType
SPPCCardDataType
SPPCIDataType
SPParallelSCSIDataType
SPPowerDataType
SPPrintersDataType
SPSerialATADataType
SPUSBDataType
SPAirPortDataType
SPFirewallDataType
SPNetworkLocationDataType
SPModemDataType
SPNetworkVolumeDataType
SPApplicationsDataType
SPExtensionsDataType
SPFontsDataType
SPFrameworksDataType
SPLogsDataType
SPPrefPaneDataType
SPStartupItemDataType

So, to get information on the type of hardware a machine has enter system_profiler SPHardwareDataType into Terminal and you’ll get something like this:

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.8f7
Serial Number: XXXXXXXXXXX

system_profiler SPPrintersDataType will give you all the information on the currently installed printers.

system_profiler SPFirewallDataType will tell you if the Firewall is on or off and if it’s on what rules are in effect. If the firewall is off you’ll get no return on the command.

admin :: Mar.28.2007 :: Management, System, Terminal :: Comments Off on Using System Profiler in Terminal

This hint is for people who don’t have Apple Remote Desktop 3.0 and may need to know whose been logging into a machine. This can come in particular use if you run a public computing lab and need to know whose been logging into your computers at 2 AM or need to know if a certain student was using a computer at a certain time.

The login stats are kept in /var/log/ in a file named wtmp

Go to Terminal to run the commands below. You either have to be logged in as root or run them as sudo.

To find out how many times people have logged in during the current month:

ac -p

To find out when people have logged in during the current month:

last

To find out this information for previous months you must unzip the log files in /var/log

Example:

gunzip /var/log/wtmp.0.gz will unzip the previous months log files

After you have unzipped you can run the following:

To find out when people logged in during that month:

last -f "path to unzipped file"

Example:

last -f /var/log/wtmp.0

To find out how many times people logged in that month:

ac -p -w "path to file name"

Example:

ac -p -w /var/log/wtmp.0

webmaster :: Mar.22.2007 :: Management, System, Terminal :: 1 Comment »

There is a nice utility available from the command line that allows you get some basic system information quickly. All of this information is available in other places but there are times when it’s easier to get it at the command line.

Open up Terminal and type “sw_vers” (no quotes) and hit return. The results you’ll get look like this:


ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.4.9
BuildVersion: 8P135


You can use different variations such as “sw_vers -productVersion” to get just that information. On the same machine in the first example that would return:


10.4.9


I recently had a need to get this information at the command line for an installer I was building. I only needed to know the first part of the product version (10.3, 10.4, etc.) so I put together a short shell script to grab that information for me.


#!/bin/bash

if [ $sysver = 10.4 ]; then
echo "This is a Tiger System"
elif [ $sysver = 10.3 ]; then
echo "This is a Panther System"
else
echo "This system is too old"
fi


This script was just a “proof of concept” on for me. Once I knew it worked I could control what things happened depending on if the machine was running 10.4, 10.3 or an older version. Just substitute the “echo” statements for what should happen. If you want to try this out paste the script into a plain text document and save it with a “.sh” extension. Go into Terminal and make it executable with chmod.

admin :: Mar.16.2007 :: Scripts, shell scripts, Terminal :: Comments Off on Get the system version using Terminal

While it’s quite easy to change which disk your machine starts up from using System Preferences there may be times when you need/want to do it either at the command line or within a script.

The command for setting the startup disk using Terminal is “bless“. To get the full story on “bless” open up Terminal and type “man bless” (no quotes).

To change the startup disk type the following in Terminal:

sudo bless -mount /Volumes/"name of your startup disk" -setBoot

So, if the desired disk was named “TestDisk” you would type this:

sudo bless -mount /Volumes/TestDisk -setBoot

If your disk name has spaces in it you’ll need to put quotes around the path to the disk, like this:

sudo bless -mount "/Volumes/My Disk" -setBoot

You can incorporate this into a UNIX shell script to reboot your machine to another disk at a certain time. Perhaps you want to reboot to another disk every Friday to run a disk utility on it, or to image it.


#!/bin/bash
bless -mount /Volumes/TestDisk -setBoot
shutdown -r now


Breaking down this script the first line sets the disk your Mac will boot from. The second line tells it to shutdown and restart immediately. If you have an Intel Mac you can add “–nextonly” at the end of the “bless” line. That will boot the machine to that volume first and then boot back to the original volume on subsequent reboots without having to reset the startup disk.

This command also comes in handy if you’re booting back and forth between volumes to test things. For example, you have a partition with 10.3 and another with 10.4 on it and you want to test some software in 10.3. You can wrap all of this up in an AppleScript and either save it on your desktop as an application or save it as a script and put it in your Script menu.

Paste this code in Script Editor and run it. Make sure you change the disk name to your disk. What for the AppleScript line breaks in the code. Any line that ends in “¬” means the line below is part of the same line. Pasting it in as it is on the web page will still work however.

[codesyntax lang=”applescript” lines=”no”]
do shell script “bless -mount \”/Volumes/Drive Name\” ¬
-setBoot with administrator privileges
do shell script “shutdown -r now” with administrator privileges
[/codesyntax]

Then simply click on the application or select if from the Script menu, enter your admin name and password and it will select the disk and reboot for you.

If you want to choose between several disks you can add in a dialog box to let you choose the correct disk.

[codesyntax lang=”applescript” lines=”no”]
display dialog “Select a startup disk” buttons ¬
{“name of disc 1”, “name of disc 2”]
set bootVol to the button returned of the result as text
do shell script “bless -mount \”/Volumes/” ¬
& bootVol & “\” -setBoot” with administrator privileges
do shell script “shutdown -r now” with administrator privileges
[/codesyntax]

admin :: Mar.15.2007 :: Applescript, shell scripts, System, Terminal :: 1 Comment »

This is less and less an issue but it still occasionally happens. Someone sends you a file, usually an application, that has resource forks in it. Either through the email system they used or the method the transferred to a server with the resource fork gets stripped out. Usually you’ll see it as a file with the same name as the application with a “.” in front of it.

You can recombine these into something useful with a somewhat hidden application on your Mac. It’s called, appropriately enough, “FixUpResourceForks”. It has to be run out of Terminal but it’s quite simple.

• Open Terminal
• Make sure both files reside in the same folder.
• Enter the following in Terminal on one line:

/System/Library/CoreServices/FixupResourceForks /path/to/folder

Obviously “/path/to/folder” is the path to the folder that holds both files. The easy way to find that is to type the first part of the command in Terminal followed by a space. Then drag the folder containing the files onto the Terminal window and it will automatically put in the correct path. Then just hit “Return” and it will recombine the files into one usable file again.

admin :: Mar.14.2007 :: Management, Terminal :: Comments Off on Fixing Files with broken Resource Forks

Here are three quick ways to identify which DHCP server your machine is getting it’s IP address from. This can come in handy when trying to track down rogue DHCP servers that pop up on a network.

In Tiger:

• Open System Profiler
• Click on “Network”
• Select which service you want to see
• It is listed under “DHCP Server Responses:” next to “Server Identifier”

In Panther and below:

• In Terminal type “ipconfig getoption en0 server_identifier”
• Change “en0” to “en1″ if using wireless

You can also wrap it in an AppleScript. This should work on most version of OS X.

[codesyntax lang=”applescript” lines=”no”]
do shell script “ipconfig getoption en0 server_identifier”
set theIP to the result
display dialog “Your DHCP server IP is: ” & theIP
[/codesyntax]

Save it as an application. Great for getting this information from the Terminal-challenged user.

admin :: Mar.14.2007 :: Applescript, Management, Scripts, System, Terminal :: Comments Off on Identifying a DHCP server