This tip allows for easy editing of files such as ~/.tcshrc or ~/.bashrc, so you can click an icon in the dock, and the file will open in TextEdit. Read the rest of the article if you'd like the step-by-step instructions.

Run this command:

gzip -f /usr/share/man/man1/*

to save some disk space!

Re-run for man2 to man8... Also run on any other man directories you might have (like /usr/X11R6/man if you installed XFree86 or /usr/local/man if you installed lots of 3rd party UNIX software).

The command will compress the man pages, significantly reducing their space usage. after that, 'man' will be a bit slower because it has to decompress all the man pages before display, but it's worth it if you want some drive space back.

If you use white space characters in your user account password, the "Installer.app" will refuse to install packages (i.e. "Developer.pkg",...). Use the 'File->Show log' menu to see what happen in the log, the Installer application will complains on access right on.

Change your password, in the "Users" system preferences panel and retry. Et voila.

Many users of dual G4's who connect to the internet via the internal modem and PPP have been reporting repeatable kernel panics. In the "great news!" category, Darwin Developer Louis Gerbarg has created a modified Apple Serial driver that appears to have resolved the kernel panics!

You can read the thread about the original driver's problems and the solution on this MacNN Forum thread, and you can download the new driver here:

http://www.rpi.edu/~gerbal2/AppleSCCSerial.kext.tgz

We know that the contrast keys on PowerBooks work if you have the Display preferences panel open. Apparently, this is because of a process called DisplayServices, which is located in System/Library/Displays.

If you have this app run everytime you log in (by dropping it into the login preferences panel) then your contrast keys should work. This worked for me, albeit with approximately 1 minute of testing.

Loren

For those of you fortran heads, here's good news. FSF GCC now officially supports Darwin/OS X, meaning that you can grab latest source at gcc.gnu.org and build a version of gcc, including fortran (g77), on your OS X box.

Although I don't personally use fortran, this would be a breakthrough for scientists and engineers who use Macs and have *a lot* of fortran libraries. Read yourself Stan Shebs' comment at darwin dev list.

Cheers

If you're looking for a way to move your installed OS X to a new volume, Robert Hancock posted a new method in this Macintouch Reader Report.

Supposedly, if you download Apple's Software Restore program (note: I can't find it on Apple's servers, but there's one on my 9.1 volume), you can boot into OS 9.1, run Software Restore, and tell it to restore your OS X partition or drive to your new drive. This will handle all hidden files and folders. Sounds like a fast, simple way to move a complete OS X installation to a new drive.

NOTE: If anyone can help with this, it'd be appreciated. I found Apple Software Restore, but when launched, it simply says "Cannot find any configurations to restore" and quits. Robert claims to have used this method a number of times, but I can't make the program do anything other than launch and quit.

If you're new to UNIX in general, and have only used programs like Fetch or Transmit as FTP tools in the past, you may find the command-line version of FTP quite daunting. There are times when you might want to use this, though, such as when remotely connected to your Mac, and you'd like to download some files locally.

Over in this MacFixit Forums thread, 'JohnBaxter' posted a nice overview of key commands to use when running FTP in a terminal session.

It's been fairly well covered that you can drag a file or directory into a terminal window to auto-type its path, but I haven't seen the corollary mentioned:

You can open a Finder window for the current working directory by entering open .
You can also open a window for the containing directory with
open ..

It's a very handy way to get at hidden files and paths without making them visible in the GUI.

This must be common knowledge by now but since no-one has mentioned it ... after you install the Developer Tools, the generic *nix distribution of Tomcat (an environment for working with Java Server Pages) works fine on MOSX.

The one you want is in this directory on the Jakarta Tomcat site, and the particular file you want is jakarta-tomcat-3.2.1.tar.gz. The 'Mac-ported' .sea & .hqx versions seem to have a classpath issue & look as if they are actually running in MRJ, not under OSX (sorry, I haven't had a really good look yet).

The version above runs exactly like on Linux - ie. started & stopped with the command-line, so you get to see errors & messages. One problem, with http on MOSX generally though, I simply can't access localhost from browsers running under Classic!

Ashley