Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category

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Enabling Root in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Monday, November 26th, 2007

When troubleshooting your Mac, it helps if you can log in as a different user. Instead of creating a new user, you can enable Root. Here’s how:

  1. Open Finder,
  2. Browse to Applications -> Utilities,
  3. Open Directory Utility,
  4. Click the lock to make changes,
  5. Enter your password when prompted,
  6. From the Taskbar go to Edit -> Enable Root User,
  7. Enter a new password for Root,
  8. Confirm the password and click OK,
  9. Close Directory Utility, and log out of your Mac,
  10. At the login screen, click the picture for Other…,
  11. Type the username root, with the password you previously set.

The root account should only be used when absolutely necessary, and when you know what you’re doing.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X, Software, Technology | 6 Comments »

Adding Recent Item to the Leopard Dock

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

I came across this handy hint on Mac OS X Hints. It adds a “special folder” to your Dock that allows you to easily browse recent applications, documents, servers, volumes etc.

Open Terminal and type, (or paste), the following command:


defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

After the command has completed, type “killall Dock” (no quotes) to restart the Dock. You’ll now have a new icon beside your Trash. Click the icon to open a stack showing your recent documents. Command-click, or right click to show options to display:

  • Recent Applications
  • Recent Documents
  • Recent Servers
  • Favourite Volumes, and
  • Favourite Items

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X, Software, Technology | Comments Off

Forcing Time Machine to Use a Network Drive

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Update 18 December 2007:

I’ve discovered a better way to force Finder to browse the contents of a network drive. You can read more here.

By default, Time Machine will not allow you to back up to a network drive – even if you can get Leopard to recognise the drive.

However, there is a command that will allow you to use a network drive with Time Machine. Before running this command, mount your network drive. Open Terminal, and at the prompt type:


defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Open Time Machine Preferences, and you should now be able to view your network drive mounts.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X, Networking, Software, Technology | 7 Comments »

My Network Drive Now Works with Mac OS X Leopard

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Update 18th December 2007

I’ve found an easier way to force Finer to recognise the contents of a network drive. You can read more about it here.

I’ve written at some length about the problems that I’ve been having getting Leopard to connect to my Network Drive via SMB. The problem has been grating on my nerves over the last few days, and I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get it to work.

I’ve tried quite a few things over the last few days to try to get it to work, all without success. Here’s just a sample:

Reinstalled Leopard from scratch

I erased my entire hard-drive and installed Leopard from scratch. I did this just in case there was a problem with the installers method of upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. In the end, I had the same problem: Leopard could see my network drive, but not the contents.

Installed Tiger, updated Tiger, then installed Leopard

Installed Tiger from scratch, once again erasing the hard-drive in the process. Updated Tiger using the Software Upgrade option from the Apple menu. Then upgraded to Leopard. I went through this rigmarole just in case there were parts of Tiger that were being carried over into Leopard and that weren’t being upgraded. Still no joy though.

Manually reverted to the old version of the smb.conf file

I located the smb.conf file in the /etc directory, renamed it smb.conf.new, then proceeded to rename smb.conf.old to smb.conf. Restarted the computer. I did this just in case it was a configuration issue. No luck with this either.

Installed the latest version of Samba

I downloaded and installed the latest version of Samba from the web. In case there was an issue with the version shipping with Leopard, I thouht it might be a good idea to try this, but I still wasn’t able to get it to work. In fact I wasn’t even able to get Samba installed. It may work, but I just didn’t see it going anywhere.

Installed Sharity 3

Sharity is a program that brings the SMBFS file system to Unix. There’s a version available for Mac OS X, but while it looked promising, it just ended up hanging the OS.

Reformatted my network drive with the Mac OS Extended File System

Thinking that it may be a problem with the way that Mac OS views FAT file systems, I tried formatting the drive for use with Mac OS. I had no problem partitioning and formatting the drive when it was directly connected to my MacBook, but when I tried to connect to the drives built-in webserver it reported that there was no free space – the firmware in the drive just didn’t recognise the file system. So I had to reformat it back to FAT32 again.

Now that I’ve been through what didn’t work for me, I can explain what I did to get Leopard to recognise my network hard drive.

  • Connect to my Network Drive using Apple-K
  • Close the lid of my MacBook
  • Leave it sleep for several hours
  • Open the lid of my MacBook and login back in

Voilà! I can now browse my network drive, and add and delete files and folders, etc. I’ve moved my iTunes Music folder to the drive and it works perfectly.

There is one issue. The network drive does not appear under the Shared section of finder, nor under the Desktop folder in my profile, even though I can see the link to the folder on my Desktop.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Networking, Software, Technology | 3 Comments »

More on Connecting to a Network Drive Using Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

Update 18 December 2007:

I’ve discovered a better way to force Finder to browse the contents of a network drive. You can read more here.

I wrote recently about the problems that I was having connecting to a network drive from my MacBook.

I still haven’t solved the problem, but I have come across something else: If I share a drive on my Windows XP computer, the computer will be displayed in the Finder Window, along with my network drive. I can browse the Windows machine, but for some reason, I still can’t browse the network drive.

Finder Window

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Posted in Mac, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Networking, Software, Technology, Windows | Comments Off

Problem Connecting to a Network Drive using SMB on Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Update 18 December 2007:

I’ve discovered a better way to force Finder to browse the contents of a network drive. You can read more here.

Today I bought a new network hard drive. I bought it because I was getting tired of dragging my old USB external drive from room to room when I needed it. Having a network accessible hard drive makes it so much easier to share data between multiple computers using multiple operating systems.

Initially I set it up from my Windows machine, as I was working on that at the time. Setup was easy enough, and within a minute I was backing up my data over the network.

My problems started when I tried to access the hard drive from my Intel MacBook running Mac OS 10.5. I could connect to the drive and the shares with no problem, but when I tried to browse the contents of the share, it appeared to be empty. Now, I know it’s not empty because I just copied data onto the drive from my Windows machine. First of all I though that it may be the Mac OS firewall that was causing the problem, but even after disabling it, I still couldn’t get Finder to see any of the files on the drive.

I tried creating a folder on the drive using Finder. It seemed to create the folder OK, but no sooner had it done so than the folder disappeared. I checked the drive using Windows XP and the folder was there. It just wasn’t visible to Leopard.

The drive that I bought has a built in FTP server, so I tried to browse the drive using my FTP program and it worked. Using Finder to connect via FTP also worked. In both instances I was able to browse OK, but I could only add new files and folders with my FTP program.

I also tried mount the drive from the command line using:


mount_smbfs //user:password@drive_name/share_name /Volumes/NAS

(BTW, I had to manually create the /Volumes/NAS directory first)

No error messages were returned by the command and the hard drive showed as being connected in Finder, but once again, the share contents were “missing”. I also tried connecting using the CIFS protocol, but the same problem occurred. In desperation, I even tried using the Apple AFP protocol, even though I had an inkling that the drive wouldn’t support it. Unfortunately I was right.

I’ve been browsing the web for a bit looking for a solution, and it looks like I’m far from being the only person with this problem. There’s a thread on the Apple forums with some possible solutions, but none have worked for me.

So for the time being it looks like I’m stuck with browsing my new hard drive via FTP from my MacBook, while my Windows machines will have no problem connecting.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X, Networking, Technology, Windows | 3 Comments »

Reinstate the 2D Dock in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

After giving out about the new 3D Dock introduced in Leopard, I came across this hint to reinstate the 2D dock. Open a terminal window and type:


defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

The Dock will restart with the 2D look, albeit with the blue luminous application indicators still in place.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Software, Technology | 2 Comments »

Leopard: Data Loss Bug

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

With any new OS there’s bound to be a few problems. Now that hype is dying down a bit, and as Leopard users get down to using the new OS, the bugs are beginning to surface. The biggest one reported to date involves data loss when moving files between different file systems.

So until Apple release a fix, if you have to move files, then stick to copy and delete.

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My Initial Reaction to Mac Os 10.5 Leopard – Part 2

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Apart from the new look to Leopard, Apple have also introduced some new features with the latest instalment of their OS. The big ones are Stacks, Spaces and Time Machine.

Stacks are a new way to browse folders that are saved in the Dock. Instead of opening in a Finder window, the folder contents are displayed as either a fan, (for folders with less than 8 items), or as a grid, (for items with more than 8 items).

Stacks using Fan Layout

Stacks using Grid Layout

If you come from a *nix background you’ll be familiar with the concept of workspaces and virtual desktops. Apple have incorporated this idea into Leopard. You can now group your applications into their own virtual desktops. Spaces also allows you to specify which desktop an application should always open in. So if for example you want your email client to open on another desktop, then you can do so in the Spaces preferences.

Spaces Settings

By default Spaces is turned off, so if you want to use it, you’ll have to enable it in System Preferences -> Expose and Spaces. The initial configuration allows for 4 Spaces, but this can be increased up to a maximum of 16.

And then there’s Time Machine. Everyone is talking about Apples new backup program. It’s proving to be the killer application for Leopard and it’s easy to see why. Time Machine has turned a chore into something that’s almost fun. Time Machine does nothing more than make incremental backups of your Mac – hourly, daily and weekly snapshots are taken – and it does it very well.

In order to use Time Machine a large external hard drive is required. The disk also needs to be formatted with the Mac OS Extended File System. Once you attach the drive to your Mac, you’ll be prompted to use it as your backup disk:

Time Machine Prompt

From there it’s just a matter of letting Time Machine do it’s thing. If you need to restore a backup, then starting the Time Machine application opens a new window that allows you to browse all the previous backups. It really is something to behold. Unfortunately I can’t show you a screenshot, but you can get an idea of what it looks like here.

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My Initial Reaction to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard – Part 1

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

Seeing as I just posted about installing Leopard, I might as well give you my initial reaction to Apples new flagship OS.

On logging in for the first time, there’s a couple of things that will strike you straight away:

The Dock has been radically changed. It now sports a 3D look, along with reflected icons. Gone are the small black arrows to indicate running applications, instead you have a glowing blue light which I find is nearly impossible to see.

Leopard Dock
Click for larger size.

The menu bar has a new “theme”, it’s now translucent, the Apple icon has been changed and the Spotlight icon has been updated. A lot of users have complained about the translucency, but my desktop picture is black along the top, so I’ve hardly noticed it.

Leopard Menu Bar
Click for larger size.

The Finder has been updated, and the folder layout on the left now resembles iTunes. The folder icons have also been updated.

Leopard Finder
Click for larger size.

So they’re the main visual differences between Tiger and Leopard. When I get a chance, I’ll post more about the other big changes.

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Posted in Apple, Mac, Technology | 1 Comment »

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