The incomparable Brad Suinn from Apple has been kind enough to release juicy tidbits about the AppleShare X Client in a unauthorized readme. Amongst other things the end of the file shows how to do an AFP/IP connection using SSH so everything is nice and secure and encrypted. Check out:
I've been very upset with Epson because my fairly common Stylus Color 670 isn't supported by the distributed OS X drivers. I've contacted them a few times, and been given the same answer:"If you need to print, use Mac OS 9." So this weekend I took matters into my own hands.
The SC670 is just a renamed SC740 (which is supported) with USB. So I used textedit to find/replace the text "SC740" with "SC670" in every file inside the SC740.plugin, located in /Library/Printers/EPSON/. There were several bundles inside the plugin bundle that also needed the same treatment. I made sure to change the names of the files also.
Now my printer is recognized and prints perfectly. I'm sure there is an easier way to make the same changes using the command line, but I'm not that comfortable with many of the commands yet. Why Epson couldn't do the same thing, and add support for this printer, remains a mystery to me...
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UPDATE: I received the following from the author of this tip:
"...unfortunately, it seems that it doesn't always work, and the variable may be the filesystem format. I had originally formatted my OS X partition as UFS, and when I hacked the printer driver it worked just fine.
Last night I decided to reformat the partition and reinstall OS X. This time I used HFS+. When I copied my hacked driver back to the Epson folder, it didn't work. I figured it may have been damaged in the backup/restore, so I went ahead and re-hacked the file. That didn't work either. I don't know what is going wrong. It may be because HFS+ is saving some sort of metadata with the files when I save the changes. The size of the bundle increases significantly after I make the changes.
Anyway, I figured I should let you know so that you can either update the hint with a caveat, or remove it to prevent anyone from screwing up their printer or something."
So as with most things experimental, use at your own risk!
This has been documented on other sites, but I'll post it here in hopes of saving someone else some grief. If you are installing on OS X on a Beige G3 with an Ultra-Wide SCSI card, you need to update your firmware. This is free and easy and Apple provides more information about the process. Oddly, I was able to install OS X without doing this, but I couldn't boot into it install I installed this update. The error I was getting looked like "can't open: pci/Apple53C875C".
As part of installing OS X, I upgraded my Mac from OS 8.6 to 9.1. When I first booted into it, most fonts displayed improperly and none of the icons displayed on the Desktop, making the system virtually unusable. Bad.
I eventually had the bright idea to boot 9.1 with the "base set" of extensions, without all my customizations that were there before. Then I started added back in the extensions I really cared about a few at a time to find the buggy one (I haven't found it yet-- I've been exploring OS X instead. :).
I believe to accomplish this I booted into 9.1 by holding down the shift key to disable all extensions, and then used the Extension Manager Control panel to revert the extensions to the "OS 9.1 base set". After another reboot, things looked normal.
[Editor's note: Similar tips have appeared over the last six months, but it's important enough to repeat. If your Classic environment is not behaving as expected, check the extension set. You'll want to boot with the bare minimum required to support the apps you use regularly in Classic.]
[Editor's note: Although Mac OS X includes SSH2, there is a newer version with some improvements - the most notable of which is the removal of the connection delay that you get with the current version. Here's a how-to from a macosxhints reader for the newest version. I have not tested this myself as of yet, but I'd expect it to work as described]
Installing SSH2 on OSX is relatively simple. The step-by-step I got partly from the 2.4.0 version of SSH README and in great part from http://osx.u.nu. If you'd like the full step-by-step instructions, read the rest of this article...
If you're like me, you've been terribly frustrated by the fact that "hostname name" doesn't permanently set the hostname under MacOS X. After a lot of (unsuccessful) poking around, I finally found a note on the macosx-admin group hosted by omniweb.com.
Edit /etc/hostconfig with your favorite editor. Change the line
HOSTNAME=-AUTOMATIC-
to
HOSTNAME="your favorite name"
Works like a charm! Still, it bugs me that Apple has disabled many of the old unix standards - I think they'd make the platform much more attractive to a very strong unix talent base if they would try to keep the old standards where they still make sense.
The network preferences file is used to store all the user entered information about your TCP-IP/PPPoE/PPP settings. If you are looking to automatically setup these settings for use in an "easy installer", the preferences file can be found at this location:
/var/db/SystemConfiguration/preferences.xml
This file is usually owned by root, in group wheel.
I don't know how helpful this will be, but in case anyone else is having a similar problem, I felt it right to share my experience.
I pre-ordered OS X a month before it was released, and tried to install it on the last Beige Macintosh they ever made - a G3 333 UWSCSI minitower.
The install CD did nothing but kernel panics, even when the machine was stripped to bare bones stock. It's now about three and a half months later, and after trying almost daily, OS X is finally installed.
Read the rest of the article if you'd like to see how Glen finally got OS X on his beige G3...
hmmm, came across this by accident. Probably most of you already know this but if not....
I moved some files to a folder thinking that I had copied them but errrr .... they moved, out of reaction (I was jsut using a text editor) I hit apple-z ... It was like magic, the files zapped back to where they came from.
oh well, if this is old news what can I say, it's new to me :-)
in Finder list view (i searched and didn't see this, so if it's a repeat i apologize...), turn OFF "Show File Sizes" for the Global List View. As all Cocoa applications are now packages, meaning they're actually directories, this is the same as turning off "Calculate file sizes" in the OLD finder and foregoing the minutes it would take to go through each folder, calculate the size, then go to the next folder, calculate THAT size, etc etc. It's equally slower (if not slower) in X.
