[Editor's note: John K. submitted this writeup a few days ago, and I managed to lose it in my inbox for a bit. My apologies for the delays in getting this posted, John!]
John writes:
My OS X install does not work well with netatalk, the unix AFP file server. When I log in as guest and mount a share, it displays correctly, but the following problems occur:
Copies do not work at all. I get an error -43.
Changes to the directories don't get displayed, and attempts to use the directory after a change can cause OS X to crash.
I cannot authenticate myself anymore. I think this is probably because I have a vanilla RedHat 7 and am missing some kind of library necessary to do secure authentication.
This was all a real bummer, because I backed up my disk to this server. If you're using netatalk, it's a good idea to move the data to an Apple server before upgrading.
If you're stuck (like I am), there's a utility, megatron, that can make macbinary files which can be ftp'd or copied via NFS, and then unmacbin'd by Stuffit Expander. I'm working on a tool to run megatron on a large number of files, so it won't be so difficult to recover from this snafu. I'll post the link here when it's done.
I wanted to edit the index.html file that sits in the ~/Sites folder. If you double-click this file, Explorer opens. So I picked it up and dropped it on my jEdit icon in DragThing. Poof - the file vanished! jEdit is a Java-based text editor, not some kind of auto-deleter, so it looked like there was a bit of a problem. A quick look showed it wasn't in the trash, and I couldn't use Sherlock to find the file, since I have about 2,500 index.html's on my machine ... so it had basically vanished into thin air.
As an experiment, I duplicated a text document, renamed it to "XXXYYYZZZ" and dropped that onto jEdit. Same results - poof, file's gone. But this time I launched Sherlock, and searched for the file. No sign of it on any disk. So once more, I went back to the finder, duplicated a text file, and named it the same thing as before. Dragged it onto jEdit, but this time, I got a message about there already being a file with that name in the location, and did I want to rename the file?
This was the enlightenment I needed. I went to the finder, right-clicked on the jEdit app, and chose Show Package Contents. There, sitting inside the jEdit application bundle, were all my test files, and the missing index.html file! Somehow, dragging and dropping the document on jEdit moved it into the app bundle, instead of launching jEdit.
I tested this with a couple other apps, and couldn't repeat the behavior. But I can repeat it consistently with jEdit. So if you use DragThing, and you seem to have dropped a file and had it vanish, check the bundle for the application you dropped it onto -- it may very well be there!
Most people know by now that you can hold down the command key and drag around a background window without bringing the window to the front. However, I also discovered that you can hold down the command key and do just about anything in a background window that belongs to a Cocoa application without bringing the window forward. You can resize the window, move scrollbars, click buttons, and pop up menus, among other things.
You can't, however, click buttons that are in customizable toolbars. This is because you can command-drag a toolbar button to a different position in the toolbar, or off of the toolbar completely, regardless of whether the window is is front or not.
I built a hello world simple application that built great. That simply means that it compiled. I did this in my home directory in a terminal application. It compiles to a.out. When I try to run this application it says I cannot find a.out. Any clues on how I can make this work?
[Editor's Note: This is the most detailed how-to I've received in six months' running this site! I have not used the tutorial, mainly because I already have this group of programs running, but this looks like a very good step-by-step on how to get them installed. -rob.]
[Second editor's note: I received a referral to another site with a step-by-step guide for compiling all three of these programs from source; I haven't used it, but it's a similar step-by-step tutorial, but it doesn't use any package files.]
Compiled and partly written by Vip Malixi with contributions from Scott Anguish, René Voorburg, Matthew Vaughn. The following tutorial is a comprehensive set of instructions for installing a new version of Apache (1.13.19), along with PHP 4.04 and mySQL 3.23.28. In order to follow these instructions, you will need to have (a) root access [detailed elsewhere on the site] and (b) the developer tools installed.
If you'd like to see how this is done, please read the rest of this article for a thorough, step-by-step guide to the process.
One of the best new features in OS X is the ability to batch-convert application links for various documents. Before finding this, I had inadvertently started up Classic simply by clicking on a .jpg file that could have been viewed in Preview instead. To make the files open a different application, shift-click to select as many of the same document type as you want (for example, 100 .jpg files), then choose Show Info from the File menu in the Finder. Select Application in the pop-up menu and you will be able to select any application you wish to open the files. Once you've made your choice, the batch-conversion is nearly instantaneous.
People may already know this but for those that don't:
You can add several different network configurations in the Network System Preferences panel. For instance if you have several different ISPs. To do this you go to the panel and select advanced options from the drop down menu. Then click New and enter something in the name box (could be the isp name or random numbers it doesn't matter really) and the modem port that you want to use for the connection. Then click ok and return to the advanced section. Then using the drop down box select your new network configuration and enter all of the details. Then when you next go to the internet Connect app you will be able to select between the two connections via the drop down menu at the top. It seems to work quite well. You don't even need to restart internet applications.
If you hold down the Command key, you can move around toolbar items without opening customize. You can add folders by dragging, of course. Saves a lot of time!
Read this @ MacNN forums; originally posted by porfiry.
If you normally leave the dock visible, it sometimes gets in the way when apps (especially Classic apps) take over the whole screen. It's a pain to mouse to the dock, switch the setting to autohide, do what you want, and switch it back to always show.
A much easier method is to hit Command-Option-D, and the dock will hide. Do what you need to do, and hit Command-Option-D again, and the dock will show itself.
Caught this one on the MacFixIt boards tonight...of course, from comment #1, I should have 'caught' it by just looking at the Apple menu! Oh well, it was a long day!
Open TextEdit, create a new document, and then drag in an application ("Clock", for example) from the Finder. You'll see a clock icon appear in your document. If you save the document, it will be in "rtfd" format, which the Finder tells me is "RTF with attachments." If you look at the size of the file, you'll see that, in fact, the entire app has been saved with the document! Now open the file you just saved. Double-click on the application icon (the clock, in this example). The application launches right from TextEdit!
I have no idea as to how this might be useful; maybe it's a standard data format (but I've never heard of embedding an application in an RTF document?). There's nothing in Apple's help about this 'feature', so this is about all I know. Anyone care to shed any more light on the subject?