Switching to Mac and have tons of MP3s, Word docs, and other vital files that you really need on your Mac? Of course, you can buy Move2Mac, or any other file transfer software/special cables, but of no one wants to pay anything when it can be done for free. There's also the "Connect to Server" feature on Macs in which you can mount your PC's hard drive on your Mac's desktop, when both computers are on the same LAN and drag files onto your Mac. However, this feature is still very unstable for me a large majority of the time. It was consistently freezing up both machines in the process of transferring files. About 15 tries later, a hard reset did more than make me ill, it left my 17" PowerBook completely unbootable. I was left with no option but to completely reformat and reinstall OS X, rendering all my previous set up work on the machine.
So after reinstalling, spending countless hours awake re-setting up everything and getting over my anger, I was still back to the drawing board relative to transferring files from the PC to the Mac. So after racking my brain, I thought of something to try, and lo and behold, it worked 98% seamlessly, was absolutely free, and never once caused my Mac any trouble!
So what is this magical solution? You'd probably never think of it, actually: Yahoo Messenger. The latest versions of Yahoo Messenger for PC and Mac have something amazing built-in: when two users are logged on and sending messages and files (the files is the key here) over the same LAN, it automatically defaults to sending those messages/files via the LAN rather than the internet. This allows for speeds up to 100Mbps for file transfers between the machines connected via Yahoo Messenger on the same LAN!
I have not understood why people were not able to use iChat's Rendezvous mode to communicate with me. People stated they sent me a message, but I would never receive it. Turns out it was, in fact, my Apple built-in firewall blocking incoming iChat messages. This does not seem like it would be a hidden hint, but you would have thought Apple would have set iChat as one of the "common ports."
To allow incoming iChat connections, go to the Sharing System Preference panel, click on the Firewall tab, then click the "New" Button. Click on the Port drop down menu and select "Other." Enter 5298 for the port number. Optional, but recomended, enter "iChat" for the description.
[robg adds: I have changed the port number (it was 5289) and any references to Rendezvous, as this is really an iChat hint (see the comments below).]
If you are running into problems using Apple Remote Desktop (for example, you can't see anything but a black screen when you try to control a remote host), and have checked for UDP connectivity over the oft-cited port 3283, try this as well...
Check to see if the intervening routers and firewalls are allowing fragmented packets. Disallowing fragments is a serious show-stopper for ARD.
Hope this helps someone who may be frustrated by the problem...
When pointing the Finder or Print Center at an SMB (Windows) file share or printer (see this hint), NetBIOS names don't seem to do the trick. Mac OS X wants DNS names or IP addresses. So, a share that you "map" on MS Windows clients as MYSERVERMYSHARE has to get translated to something like smb://myserver.company.com/myshare in order for the Finder to understand it in the Connect to Server box. The problem I've found is that these mappings aren't always obvious.
Fortunately, Jaguar comes with some Samba UNIX tools that can help out with this problem, but they're kind of obscure. After much headache and stumbling through web tutorials, I wrote the following AppleScript to make them easy to use for name/address translation.
After much taking, I'm happy to be able to give something to the community!
This relates to a previous hint, where some Macintoshes do not auto-negotiate properly with the networking hardware. The current solution is to run a terminal command, sudo ifconfig en0 media 100basetX mediaopt full-duplex, which then correctly sets the media type and speed (in my case, 100basetX and full-duplex). Unfortunately for some of us, these settings don't 'stick' after a restart (the adapter goes back to autoselect), and must be re-set manually each time.
What is needed here is a process that does this type of thing for us on startup, even before reaching the login screen. This is accomplished by creating a StartupItem, and putting it in /Library -> StartupItems. StartupItem is really a folder containing two parts: A shell script of the same name as the folder, and an XML file called StartupParameters.plist.
Create a folder called setDuplex in /Library -> StartupItems, and create a file inside with the same name. The file should contain the following text:
#!/bin/sh
# forces 100baseTX and full-duplex
. /etc/rc.common
ifconfig en0 media 100basetX mediaopt full-duplex
Make it executable by typing chmod a+x setDuplex. Note that you do not need a sudo command in the script, because it is already being run as root.
Next, create another file called StartupParameters.plist, containing the following text:
Restart, then type ifconfig -a in the Terminal, and your en0 interface should no longer say autoselect, and should have the correct settings.
Forgive me if there are any errors, etc - this is my first shell script, and first XML file! I believe everything should be ok, though! It works well on my server.
It appears that SCSI disks initialized with HFS or HFS Extended mount fine on a local machine with a SCSI card installed. However, HFS disks cannot be mounted across a local network ... but HFS Extended disks are seen and mounted by OSX and OS9. Hmmmmm.
[robg adds: If anyone can confirm this, I'd appreciate it. I don't have a SCSI drive...]
I had an old stereo receiver that I wanted to hook up in my basement, but I didn't want to pony up the cash for a new CD player so I improvised. I mounted two shelves on the wall; the top shelf holds my receiver, the second shelf has room for my PowerBook. I bought a "mini jack to RCA" adapter to hook up my PowerBook from the headphone jack to the receiver and play MP3s with iTunes. Easy enough. However, I didn't want to use all my drive space on my Powerbook for MP3s, so I installed an MP3 server, gnumpd, on my Linux Box located on the second floor and access it over my Airport network.
Gnump3d has a nice web interface to select playlists, songs, etc. To make things super easy to find the web server, I created a shell script on my Linux box to register the server with Rendezvous. I used JRendezvous and had the following lines in the shell script:
Now all I have to do is launch Safari, open the Rendezvous Tab, and my MP3 server shows up there as MyTunes, ready to go. Hope the rumors of the next iTunes having Rendezvous support are true so I can eliminate the browser all together.
Following a story on slashdot led to this article about hiding your system fingerprint from nmap. Now as far as I know (from nmap scanning on my local network), my machine has never been tagged (identified), but the suggestion about dropping packets to closed ports seemed like a "Good Idea." The instructions, in the BSD section were:
I used the values (2,1), and nmap was then unable to even propose a set of values (it failed on tests 2,5,6,7 and U). Note sure of the real value but for the paranoid out there, why not give yourself a little extra edge.
This is a follow-on to a previous hint. Hawking Technologies now sells a "single USB" version of the print server (Model H-PS1U) mentioned in that hint. Adding it to my network was relatively simple.
My network is cable moden connected to an Snow Airport basestation (acting as a DHCP server). The basestation is hardwired to a five-port hub. A Cube is also hooked to the hub. My wife and I each have an iBook with an Airport card. All computers are running Jaguar 10.2.4. An Epson 777 was connected to the Cube via USB. Of course, the Cube and printer are in the basement, so if we wanted to print from an iBook we had to go downstairs and plug the 777 into the iBook.
I was psyched when the PS1U came out. To add it to the network I had to:
Plug the 777 into the PS1U. Plug the PS1U into the ethernet hub. Plug in the power for to the PS1U.
To assign an IP address to the PS1U start Terminal.
Enter sudo arp -s 10.0.1.222 aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff (see man arp). NOTE - A static IP number on an AirPort network should be anything between 10.0.1.201 and 10.0.1.254 (see Airport documentation). I picked 222 because it's easy to remember. Replace 'aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff' with the 12 digit MAC number on the white sticker of the PS1U.
Apple's PPTP Internet Connection app doesn't provide split routing. To avoid that all your traffic going through the VPN tunnel, you could start (as root using sudo), when the VPN connection is already established, the following script.
Where AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD is provided by the logfile of the PPTP connection application: "remote IP address AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD" . Then only connections to the AAA.BBB.x.y range of addresses will use the VPN.
