I began encountering errors after installing Tiger when using an X11 forwarding session on my Mac to a remote machine using ssh -X, and then trying to run remote X-apps.
To overcome the errors, I found I now have to use the -Y option instead of the -X option with ssh to start X11 forwarding properly. The -Y option is the same as -X, but is more strict about security. From the man page:
-X Enables X11 forwarding. This can also be specified on a per-host
basis in a configuration file.
X11 forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the
ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the
user's X authorization database) can access the local X11 display
through the forwarded connection. An attacker may then be able
to perform activities such as keystroke monitoring.
-Y Enables trusted X11 forwarding.
Thus, Tiger seems to be more strict about X11 forwarding than was Panther...
Under 10.4, my Dock icon for my internal hard drive was showing mach and mach.sym when control-clicked. This irritated me so I decided to check out .hidden in the root directory. To my surprise, that file has been removed under 10.4. On a hunch, I decided to recreate the file using pico. I entered this text exactly into the file (again, this is in the top-level directory):
mach
mach.sym
And I restarted the system. Sure enough, after the restart, I found that 10.4 respects the file, even though it's no longer installed by default. Those files no longer appear in my Dock icon for the hard drive.
Spotlight is nice service, but in my opinion, it has very limited control options in GUI, so I had to start digging into the internals to solve some of its problems. Here is solution for one of them.
I've noticed that Spotlight doesn't want to index some plain text files in my home Documents folder. It turns out that, to be indexed, text files must meet rather specific conditions. In particular, they must have the extension .txt or .text, OR they should have file type set to TEXT. The simplest method, of course, would be to rename the files, but this is not always possible, so a second method is always a good option.
I don't know if it's possible to change a file's type from the GUI, so I use the command line utility SetFile from the Developer Tools package for this. SetFile -t TEXT filename will do the job and will make your file indexable.
To check if a given file (not only text files) is already indexed, you'll need to use the mdimport command. In the Terminal, type mdimport -d1 filename_to_test. If it says something like this:
2005-05-03 22:27:53.872 mdimport[336] Import 'filename' type
'dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8z2addrf3u' no mdimporter
then Spotlight doesn't recognize the format (no mdimporter is the key part) of filename. If it says something like this:
2005-05-03 22:29:46.764 mdimport[338] Import 'filename' type
'com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text' using
'file://localhost/System/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporter/'
Then it's all good and file is already indexed. Enjoy!
My gripe:
Why does Apple have to shove this tool down the user's throat by not making it, including that insipid menu, optional? Telling Spotlight to Ignore your hard drive won't delete existing indexes or databases. Telling Spotlight to ignore your hard drive wont turn off the now-useless menu.
Disclamer:
I really have no idea if this is the best or even a good way to do this. I want Spotlight gone. I only have Tiger to keep up to date, and I do not run out of date hardware or software.
So here's what I did...
[robg adds: Just a caution if you're going to try this -- I haven't tested it, and I have no idea what the implications may be on other programs that rely on Spotlight. Mail, for instance, uses Spotlight functionality for searching. I have no idea how this hack will affect Mail and the other Spotlight-enabled programs. Consider yourself warned...]
The Weather widget is English-only when you install Tiger. It can be translated as easily as it can be done for most any application.
The widget is located in /Library/Widgets. Change the permissions of the files so you can write to it (using File: Get Info). Open the widget's bundle (Control-click and Show Package Contents), and then copy the English.lproj to (for example) French.lproj. Then edit the file named localizedStrings.js with your favorite pure-text editor. When done, save the file, reset the permissions, and reload the widget.
Read the rest of the hint for the French translation instructions, including a caution about accented characters.
If you would like to enable Quartz 2D Extreme (see this hint for more info on it), but don't have the VRAM to support it, you can change the minimum requirements by following these steps in the Terminal:
$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions\
/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources
$ sudo pico Configuration.plist
Once in the editor, change these values to match your machine (use System Profiler to get the required details):
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one, and I can't imagine that the results would be very good -- Quartz 2D Extreme requires a large amount of VRAM to work, and if it can't find it, uses a form of virtual memory to simulate the VRAM on the card. At least, that's my interpretation after reading the review at Ars Technica (linked in the above-linked hint). I would imagine a reboot would be required to activate these changes, and I'd also strongly recommend making a backup (sudo cp Configuration.plist Configuration_BACKUP.plist) before you start editing this file -- just in case you want to easily revert the changes.]
It seems that Tiger's installer overwrote my /etc/hosts file without asking. If, like me, you add aliases or override addresses using the hosts file on occasion, you won't want to lose this. Make a backup!
[robg adds: In general, if you've tweaked anything in a system-level directory, the chances are good your changes will be overwritten by the installer -- it happens with httpd.conf files, too. Before any sort of upgrade, back up everything, then you can get anything you like back afterwards...]
[robg adds: This is the first I've heard of using a minus sign to get a NOT functionality directly in the Spotlight bar. The comments on the linked site (note that it was very slow to load when I tested it) add a bit more detail...]
I was annoyed at the ugly "PRO" text found next to the Quicktime 7 player's disabled Edit (and other) menu items. It was so ugly and "in-your-face" that I sought to remove it. Removal was easier than expected.
Select the Quicktime Player application in /Applications and Control-click it. Select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, open the Resources folder, and delete the ProMenuItem.tif file.
Start QuickTime Player, and the annoying PRO is gone!
[robg adds: I'm a firm advocate of non-destructive editing, so I'd suggest just renaming or moving the existing file, instead of deleting it.]
Or, for that matter, news from any RSS feed. This seems to work on any newsfeed, but here's an example of how to show MacOSXHints on your screensaver:
Change your screen saver to RSS Visualizer, in the Screen Saver tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences panel. Now open terminal, go to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost, and you'll find a file whose name starts with RSS Visualizer and ends with .plist. Convert the file into XML by using this command:
plutil -convert xml1 RSS Visualizer[press Tab to auto-complete]
Open the XML file in your favoriate editor, and locate this line:
<key>feedURL</key>
Under that tag, you'll find the URL of the RSS feed. Change the current entry to this:
http://www.macosxhints.com/backend/geeklog.rdf
Now save the file, and convert it back into binary plist format by using this command:
plutil -convert binary1 RSS Visualizer[press Tab to auto-complete]
Open your screensaver and there you go. One catch: The RSS screensaver doesn't seem to understand the 'feed' protocol, but changing that to 'http' seems to do the trick.