A reader is looking for information on some advanced FTP server options in OS X. He's tried the various boards and had no luck, so I'm posting here in case there are any answers out there. He writes:

I've looked near and far and have heard from many other people the same problem. Finding a concise document to set up a FTP server on OS X is hard to find. Basically I am looking for some tips on these few tasks which I can not figure out and I believe would help many other OS X newbies:

1. I have set up a ftpchroot file to resrict users to their home directories, but how do I provide them a link in their home directory to a community folder for all of them to upload and download from?
   
2. How do I limit access to say two logins per user, and limit their bandwidth?
   
3. How do I go about setting up groups in user administration say so that all FTP users would be in thier own user group of FTP?

If anyone could shed some light on these relatively simple tasks which are complicated to us newbies please please feel free to provide some answers. Thank you.

If you command click an item in the dock, it reveals that item. But I noticed that this also works if you are inside a folder's popup menu in the dock and command release on an item. It will reveal that menu item in the Finder.

I have seen some scattered reports of problems connecting to other systems using 10.0.4 (which includes OpenSSH 2.9p1, according to Apple's documentation). The connection begins, but then terminates with the message "Disconnecting: Bad packet length -898731090", or just fails to connect. To help debug the problem, you can try using SSH with a -v option, which is verbose mode and will show you the details of the connection attempt.

The X4U mailing lists have had some discussion on this topic, and have come up with three possible solutions:

1. Try connecting with the 'blowfish' encryption scheme (ssh -c blowfish xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
   
2. Compile and install OpenSSH 2.9p2 on your OS X box (there are instructions on StepWise)
   
3. Upgrade the other machine (if you can) to OpenSSH 2.9p1 or later
   
4. Try forcing SSH to use SSH1 instead of SSH2 (ssh -1 machine.domain.com) [noticed on MacFixit this morning]
   
5. Regenerate your SSH keys (use ssh-keygen at the command line) [from the comments below]

Each of the above methods has worked for at least one user. Personally, SSH is working for me just as it did before the upgrade, but if you're having troubles, try one of the above solutions.

Check your Software Update panel - it's out there! This is from the Read Me:

"The 10.0.4 Update delivers a significant number of improvements for USB devices including additional external device support for iTunes CD burning, improved battery life for many PowerBook G3 systems, and Classic compatibility improvements. This update also provides the latest security updates to OpenSSH and 'sudo' services and includes support for Apple's newest digital flat-panel, the 17-inch Apple Studio Display."

The list of modified files is way too long to post here -- you can see it yourself by doing this from the terminal:

[prompt] cd /Library/Receipts/10.0.4Update.pkg/Contents/Resources
[prompt] lsbom 10.0.4Update.bom

Don't type the [prompt], that's just my representation of your command-line prompt. This will show you all the updated files installed by the updater.

NOTE: Apple has released (for the first time!) update notes which detail exactly what was changed, in easy-to-understand language. Give them a read-through to see everything that was updated (and why!).

Back in the OS X Public Beta days, Ryan Rempel created a hack to get OS X installed on older machines. Now, thanks to Other World Computing, he's been able to create an installer that handles a number of the older machines with the release version of OS X. Read all about it (and download the installer) on Other World Computing's OS X for Legacy Macs page.

[Editor's note: There's a previously published tip on moving the Users' folder - but I felt this alternate method merited posting on its own. Check both tips if you're interested in moving your Users directory to a new drive or partition.]

I have three partitions on my dual G4. One for OS 9.1, one for OS X, and one I wanted to use as some file repository. However, OS X does not allow guest-sharing of files outside of the Public folder. So, I decided to try and have MacOS X recognize the other partition as the Users directory. This is what I did:

- su-ed to root
- gnutar cf users.tar Users/
- mv users.tar /Volumes/TargetDisk/
- cd /Volumes/TargetDisk/
- gnutar xf users.tar
- rename original Users folder to Users-old
- cd /
- ln -s /Volumes/TargetDisk/Users Users

Now a symbolic link exists where the original Users folders resided. Then, you have to log out and log back in again. After re-logging, you should see that the system recognizes the Users folder on the other partition as the one with your home directory.

The only problem I had, was that some aliases may not work anymore. For example, I have an alias to the Favorites.html in OS9.1 in my Explorer preferences. That one, I had to reestablish. Apart from this, it works smoothly.

[Editor's note: This tip was submitted last weekend by an anonymous reader]

There are many "alternate" little applications and hacks for people who want to change their Mac OS X experience. One of my favorites is MenuStrip, the $7 program that gives you a bunch of useful buttons to put along the top right of your window. Very Mac-like, you can choose what it will display, so it's minimalist, as it should be.

The best button is the "hide all apps" button, so you can get rid of all those windows in a flash. I have a KeyQuencer macro do this on Mac OS 9 -- press a key, get rid of all apps and bring up the Finger -- and MenuStrip brings this functionality to OS X. Very nice.

[Editor's note: This tip was submitted last weekend by Argano]

Try pressing the key combo option+mute - this opens the system prefs directly to your sound window pane. Seems to work in both classic and carbon apps

I'm running 10.0.3 build 4P13

Hopes this helps someone out.

[On my machine (G4/733), this brought the System Prefs app to the foreground, but didn't display the window (quite odd!). And repeatedly pressing option-mute caused my machine to go into slow-motion mode and pegged the CPU meter at 100% utilization. Not sure what happened, but everything was fine after I restarted. Not sure if that's specific to my machine or not, so try this trick at your own risk. -rob.]

I noticed today that Opera has released the technology preview of their Opera browser for OS X. I haven't had a chance to try this one yet, but the Classic version is incredibly fast at page rendering! Check it out and send them your feedback if you want to see another good browser developed for OS X.

There's a simple tutorial that explains how to write and execute a Perl script under Mac OS X located at http://www.mactipscafe.com/tip015/

[Editor's note: MacTipsCafe has some other tips on using OS X as well; make sure you check out the home page while you're there.]