Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'What an excellent article!' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
What an excellent article!
Authored by: GEllenburg on Dec 31, '02 05:45:25AM

As a Mac user off and on for the past 15 years, and a UNIX BoFH for over a decade, the information provided above is great.

I "switched" to OS X in August (from a FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris environment) and will never go back. (Ok, I still say FreeBSD has a better TCO and ROI for servers than OS X Server but that's another story.)

One thing missing is more discussion of the UNIX root account. A seasoned UNIX veteran knows the dangers and pitfalls of root. Then again, a UNIX veteran knows and understands its necessity at times.

What happens if the admin user's password is forgotten? Reboot the server? UNIX veterans don't reboot servers unless they have to. However, they could log in as root from the console. (A UNIX veteran will hunt down the sshd_config files and restrict root from logging in remotely.)

To enable the root password on OS X, simply type: 'sudo su -' in the Terminal.app to get a root shell. Your UNIX friends will feel right at home then by typing 'passwd' to enable a password on the root account.

Also, every UNIX person coming to an OS X environment should read the "Porting UNIX applications to Mac OS X" which is in the Developer Documentation (can't remember the path off the top of my head though.) It provides excellent information about the nuances OS X has with regards to startup scripts, gotchas with the operating system itself, and other subtle differences between UNIX, NeXT, MacOS, and OS X.

Otherwise, a fantastic article. I've got to try that vnc trick with XFree86 to see if the response time is improved with X apps, myself.



[ Reply to This | # ]
What an excellent article!
Authored by: SOX on Jan 02, '03 11:12:44AM

your welcome.

a few VNC hints. KDE is picky about its resolution bit depth, so if KDE mysteriously complains and wont start, adjust the bit depth.
also In my experience not all VNC clients are the same. After various OS updates I have found that VNCdimension works noticably better/worse than VNCthing. I have no idea why but emprically it is so. VNC is not intrisically secure (just obscure) but can be made so by tunneling. (for paranoids, tell the server to turn off the http:5800 port.) At this time the reigning champian for VNC servers is tightVNC--however none of the mac-cleints support the tight protocol at this time (install it anyhow, since it just defaults to non-tight propocol, and someday soon the mac clients will support tightVNC)



[ Reply to This | # ]