The Cisco VPN client 4.7.00 (0510) mostly works for me on OS X 10.4.4, but I get "Error 51" sporadically, and I used to have to reboot to stop it, but not any more.

I took a tip that I found on VersionTracker and did a slight tweak to the command, so that the cvpnd process daemonizes silently to the background and you don't have to remember to keep restarting it:

launchd -d /bin/sh -c \ 
"while [ 1 ]; do /private/opt/cisco-vpnclient/bin/cvpnd; done"

Hopefully Cisco will solve the problem, so that we don't have to resort to hacky solutions like this.

I like the Torrent client Transmission, but right now it does not have the same level of detail as some other clients do (BitTorrent or Azureus) such as showing the IPs of the peers you are connected to. So I wrote a script, and I have GeekTool run it every five seconds and then I put the results in a window on my desktop. The result of the script is a list of open sockets, and a title at the top that tells me how many Transmission is using.

Here's the code:


Substitute your user name and the name of the application you want to monitor above, but it does need to be the name exactly as it appears in the ps command.

A brief explanation of what is going on here. The first part of the script determines the current PID of the Transmission client, but you could grep for any application name, such as a browser if you wanted to monitor its active connections.

The remaining lines use the PID of the application that comes back to narrow the search down to just the sockets that app is using, and also remove the local host connections and then print out the IPs and ports with a total.

Enjoy, feedback welcome.

I have changed WEP key on my router for security reasons. However, even after I deleted my wireless network from the preferred network list, and re-added it with the new WEP password, it would still use old one.

As I found out latter, the WEP key is stored in the keychain, and must be updated by using Keychain Access (in Applications -> Utilities).

Let's say you have an "old" Mac you want to wirelessly connect to your AirPort network. In my case, it's an eMac. Like me, you probably don't want to buy an expensive AirPort Extreme card. It's worse if you have an old G3 CRT iMac: the already-expensive card needs an exepensive adapter! So you look on the internet for a cheap USB WiFi dongle solution, like many of your PC friends own. What? They don't make any of these for Macs? D-Link made one two years ago, but its new version (the DWL-G122) doesn't support OS X any more. So I came across a one-year-old hint here, which made me purchase it, because the hint (and replies) stated that "rev B1" of this dongle used a chipset that was Mac-compatible ... and that the maker (Ralink) had an OS X driver available on their site.

But I quickly was disappointed: I could only use it when I had no password assigned to my wireless network! It just wouldn't work when my WEP encryption was enabled. After much research, and the help of others in the Ralink forums, I found a solution. Put simply (for you quick-minded network genies), you need to enable WPA Personal encyption (instead of WEP, which seems to be totally broken with this version of the driver) and use a 13-character password.

For other, less-exeperienced users, I have written a very detailed walkthrough, which is a combination of the old hint, personal experience, info found on Apple's help pages, and elsewhere on the internet.

OK, so this is probably a combination of all sorts of previous hints, but this is how I access, listen to, and even edit my iTunes music, located at home, from any place with an internet connection via SMB. This is an alternative to a recently published hint about using zerospan to access your iTunes music as shared music via Bonjour. I tried that hint, but didn't succeed because of firewall issues, I think.

Read on for the step-by-step...

Though OS X should, under normal circumstances, just automagically figure all this stuff out on its own, certain brain-dead networks are messed up to the point that standard settings won't work reliably and OS won't be able to auto-correct.

In particular, some (not me, thankfully) will have a problem with their Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) set too high. There are some older hints discussing this problem, but none really discuss how to figure out if you do or not.

This script will do the trick. If it says that your MTU is 1500 or more, you can forget all about MTUs. If it says it's something smaller, and you've been having network problems, you've probably found at least one of the mysterious sources of your troubles. If it says it's something smaller, and your network is behaving properly, just forget you ever ran the script.

[robg adds: Save the script using your favorite text editor, and then remember to make it executable (chmod a+x script_name) before running it. You should also edit line 13 (PingHost="ns.fastq.com") and replace the hostname with a host of your choosing -- your local nameserver is suggested in the script's comments. I tested it, and it seems to work as described.]

I bought a dirt-cheap E-Tech Broadband Router with USB Printer Server (Model RTPR01), which officially supports the Mac platform only on the routing part of the product. There's no mention in the manuals about the built-in print server being compatible with Mac OS X, but I managed to make it work in a, for me, quite unexpected way. Note that I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.4 on a G3 iMac and G3 iBook. Now I can use the print server to print via my home network on an Epson Stylus Color 760. Here's how I did it:

1. Download and install Gimp-Print 5.0.0-beta2 or later (not Gimp-Print 4.2.7, which doesn't work for reasons that I don't know).
2. Add a printer in the Printer Setup Utility and then click the 'IP Printer' button.
3. Type the IP-address of the E-Tech router (which is 192.168.1.1 by default, but can be changed in anything you need).
4. If you want, type a name and a location.
5. Choose a suitable printer driver at the 'Print Using' drop-down menu.
6. Choose 'HP Jet Direct - Socket' at the 'Protocol' drop-down menu.
7. Click the 'Add' button in the Printer Browser dialogue.

Voilá! Your E-Tech Router/Print Server should work properly (supposing you connected all the cables properly). To me it was quite a surprise that it worked (after hours of trial-and-error) because I am printing with an Epson printer -- so I wouldn't expect the 'HP Jet Direct - Socket' protocol to work.

If your printer is still not working and you are using the E-Tech Router/Print Server behind an already working DHCP-server, make sure the first three octets (and only the first three octets) of the IP address of the E-Tech Router / Print Server match the first three octets of the IP addres of your DHCP server. In that case, you should also disable the built-in DHCP Server of the E-Tech Router/Print Server to avoid conflicts.

I can't belive I got it to work, but it did, just by modifying the MetaClasses.plist file. The new stuff has to be after the 'v3' entry, but before all of the USB entries -- at least that's how mine works. So far, this is what the code looks like.

To find the MetaClasses.plist file, control-click on the iSync application and select Show Pacakge Contents from the pop-up menu. Navigate to Plugins -> ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice -> Contents -> Plugins -> PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin -> Contents -> Resources, and in that folder you will find MetaClasses.plist. Before you start changing stuff around, my advice is to make a copy of your original file and name it MetaClasses.plist.old or similar.

Now here's the kicker ... for whatever reason, the file uses the MOTV3-black.tiff icon. So I just deleted that one, and used a new one I made. You can find a lot more on this topic in this thread at howard forums.

[robg adds: This previous hint explained how to add basic iSync support, but without Bluetooth.]

I imagine that, like me, many people are stuck behind a firewall that you don't control, but you would like to access a computer outside of the firewall (either out -> in or in -> out). The best solution I've found this is a free product called Hamachi.

Hamachi runs on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. With Hamachi, you can create a private virtual network that allows you to communicate amongst the various machines that have the Hamachi client installed. Unlike the Windows version, the Mac version is currently command line only, but can be fairly easily installed by following these instructions from the Hamachi forums. Note that you'll also have to install the OS X TUN/TAP driver.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one. If you are going to do so, I would strongly suggest you check with your IT department first -- many companies, such as one of my previous employers, have very harsh policies when it comes to circumventing firewalls.]

I have two machines, one connected to the net via DSL, the second connected to first via FireWire. The question is how to get Internet access on the second machine? Apple claims it's possible, but does not provide any setup instructions. So here's a solution that worked for me.

Machine A:

Tiger. Connected to Verizon DSL modem. Ethernet is first item in Network prefs, FireWire is second.

Ethernet port: DHCP with manual address. IP set to something in router range, that is, given router IP of 192.168.1.1, set the IP address to 192.168.1.x, where x is anything between 2 and 255.

FireWire port: DHCP with manual address, and IP address to a different network. For example 192.168.2.1 (the last digit must be 1). Now enable Personal File Sharing and Internet Sharing. In Safari, connect to your router i.e. http://192.168.1.1. You will see your DSL modem setup screen. Note your primary and secondary DNS IP numbers. That should be somewhere on the Status page or something similar.

Machine B:

Not connected to modem. FireWire is the only network port in Network prefs. Set it to DHCP. Apply. Note IP router number that machine B will select automatically. If different than IP FireWire port address on machine A, go to machine A and set its FireWire IP to router IP on machine B.

Enter primary and secondary DNS IPs that you obtained from your modem above in "DNS Servers" field, one per line. Enable Personal File sharing.

Both machines will have access to internet and be able to mount each other for file sharing. It is possible to have a FireWire camera or disk connected at the same time to the other FireWire port, and everything works fine -- but slowly.