Apple OSX – Nosce Te Ipsum

Category: Apple OSX

Installing RD9700 chipset based USB ethernet adapter to Mac…

April 21, 2016
by Muhammad

After buying and trying to install a cheap USB ethernet adapter for my Mac I stumbled upon this page from a helpful soul who had gone through the same agony.

In case the page is taken down I will ‘copy-paste’ the instructions here.

If you bought a cheap aftermarket USB-Ethernet adapter like me and found that it doesn’t work on El Capitan or Yosemite, here’s what you need to get it going.

Seriously. You can stop tearing you hair out now. It’ll all be ok.

As with all advice on the internet, you can’t sue me if this sets fire to your cat or sends ninjas to your house. You’re doing this on your own, and I assume no liability or warranty for what you do.

Steps to get your adapter working if you justupgraded to Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan.

Reboot. As soon as the screen goes black, hold down “Command” and “R” until you see a black screen with an Apple logo and a white progress bar. Let go, and wait for your computer to boot into recovery mode.
From the top bar, select “Utilities” and then “Terminal”
In the terminal, run csrutil disable.
From the top bar, select “”, then “Restart”
When you boot back up, you’ll have a working adapter!
Definitely take a read down below to see what’s changed in El Capitan, and if disabling SIP makes sense for your setup.

Steps to get your adapter working if you’ve never used the adapter before in Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan.

Uninstall the dozens of other drivers you may have installed in the process of trying to get this working.
Unplug your USB adapter, and reboot and give yourself a clean slate.
Reboot. As soon as the screen goes black, hold down “Command” and “R” until you see a black screen with an Apple logo and a white progress bar. Let go, and wait for your computer to boot into recovery mode.
From the top bar, select “Utilities” and then “Terminal”
In the terminal, run csrutil disable.
From the top bar, select “”, then “Restart”
Once you’re booted back up, download and install the drivers from the CD, kindly uploaded by this fine human being.
Reboot.
Open your terminal, and run sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/USBCDCEthernet.kext
Reboot.
Plug in your USB Adapter, with a live ethernet cable.
Open System Preferences, and go to the Network Pane.
Hit the + button in the bottom right, select the “USB 2.0 10/100M Ethernet Adapter”, and hit add.
You’re all set! Your adapter works!
Apologize to the people you care about for the things you’ve said over the past few hours. They won’t understand, but they will forgive you.

Steps to get your adapter working on Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite

Uninstall the dozens of other drivers you may have installed in the process of trying to get this working.
Unplug your USB adapter, and reboot and give yourself a clean slate.
Download and install the drivers from the CD, kindly uploaded by this fine human being.
Reboot.
Open your terminal, and run sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"
Reboot.
Open your terminal, and run sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/USBCDCEthernet.kext
Reboot.
Plug in your USB Adapter, with a live ethernet cable.
Open System Preferences, and go to the Network Pane.
Hit the + button in the bottom right, select the “USB 2.0 10/100M Ethernet Adapter”, and hit add.
You’re all set! Your adapter works!
Apologize to the people you care about for the things you’ve said over the past few hours. They won’t understand, but they will forgive you.

What’s going on. (Yosemite Version).

The old drivers still work, no problem, but are being blocked in Yosemite because they aren’t “signed” properly, since they weren’t re-issued for Yosemite. As “unsigned” drivers, Mac OS refuses to load them, saying they constitute a security hazard.

What step 5 does is instructs your computer to set itself to “developer mode”, which allows you to load unsigned kexts. This is a mild security risk, but it should be fine for most people. If you’re in doubt, please make the decision that makes the most sense for your security concerns. You might be better off just buying legit Apple hardware so you don’t have to disable the security. That’s your call.

If you ever do go legit and want to undo it, just run sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=0, and things will be back where you left them.

What’s going on. (El Capitan Version).

In short, it’s the same scenario as Yosemite, just stricter. Apple has a new security mode, called “System Integrity Protection” (SIP) that prevents anyone – even you with your password – from modifying system files.

The old drivers still work, no problem, but are being blocked in El Capitan because they aren’t “signed” properly, since they weren’t re-issued for El Capitan. As “unsigned” drivers, Mac OS refuses to load them, saying they constitute a security hazard.

The csrutil disable step turns off SIP for your entire system, which allows you to load and use the drivers. This also disables malware protection for your machine, and given that we’ve started to see genuine malware for OS X in the wild, it’s a slightly larger security risk than it was in Yosemite.

If you’re in doubt, please make the decision that makes the most sense for your security concerns. You might be better off just buying legit Apple hardware so you don’t have to disable the security. That’s your call.

If you ever do go legit and want to undo it, just reboot into recovery mode and run csrutil enable, and things will be back where you left them.

Anyhow, after hours of searching and pulling out my own hair, I thought it’d be worth sharing the solution! Enjoy!

Apple OSX

How to hide a user in Mac OS X

April 2, 2016
by Muhammad

Hide a user account in OS X Yosemite

You can prevent a user account from appearing in the login window in OS X Yosemite by using these steps:.

1. Log in as an admin user.

2. Use this Terminal command, substituting the short account name name of the user you wish to hide for “hiddenuser”:

sudo dscl . create /Users/hiddenuser IsHidden 1

If you later want to show the hidden user, set the user’s IsHidden attribute to 0 like this:

sudo dscl . create /Users/hiddenuser IsHidden 0

You can optionally delete the IsHidden attribute instead of setting it to 0.

Additional Options

You can also move the hidden user’s home directory to a place not visible from the Finder, and remove the hidden user’s Public Folder share point.

The following command moves the home directory of “hiddenuser” to /var, a hidden directory:

sudo mv /Users/hiddenuser /var/hiddenuser

The following command updates the user record of “hiddenuser” with the new home directory path in /var:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/hiddenuser NFSHomeDirectory /var/hiddenuser

The following command removes the Public Folder share point for the user with the long name “Hidden User”:

sudo dscl . -delete "/SharePoints/Hidden User's Public Folder"

Hide a user account in earlier versions of OS X

There are three ways you can hide a user in versions of OS X earlier than Yosemite.

Set the Login window to display name and password fields

In the Users & Groups preferences pane (Accounts pane in Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier), click Login Options, then select “Display login window as: Name and password”.

With this enabled, no user accounts are listed in the Login window.

If changing the Login Window to only display the name and password fields does not meet your needs, then you can use the following steps in this article to hide a user account.

Add users to the HiddenUsersList (advanced)

With Mac OS X v10.4 and later you can hide users from the Login window by adding them to the HiddenUsersList array in the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file. The following command will hide the users “mei” and “anne” from the Login window:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add mei anne

Note: These users will still appear in the Accounts (Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier) or Users & Groups (OS X Lion) pane in System Preferences.

Lower the user’s UID and enable the Hide500Users option (advanced)

You can use the advanced steps below to change a user’s UID, adjust their home directory permissions and enable the Hide500Users option. An example user account “tom” is used below.

The following sample Terminal command changes the user tom’s UID to 401. Note: Check to make sure the new UID is not in use before making this change.

sudo dscl . -create /Users/tom UniqueID 401

This command adjusts the permissions of the user’s home directory:

sudo chown -R tom /Users/tom/

Enable the Hide500Users option with this command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow Hide500Users -bool YES

Ref URL: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203998

Apple OSX

Convert MP3 to iPhone ringtone

April 17, 2013
by Muhammad

Start iTunes and find the song you want to convert. (It must be an MP3.)
Right-click the song and choose Get Info.
Click the Options tab.
Check the Start Time and Stop Time boxes, then enter times for each (no more than 30 seconds apart, the maximum length for a ringtone). I used 0:00 and 0:30, respectively, as “Spit It Out” has a perfect ascending lead-in.
Click OK, then right-click the song again and choose Create AAC Version. You should immediately see a new 30-second version of the song.
Drag that version out of iTunes and into the folder of your choice.
Delete the 30-second version from iTunes and undo the Start Time/Stop Time changes to the original.
Open the folder containing the 30-second AAC file you dragged out of iTunes, then change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r. Double-click it and it immediately gets added to iTunes’ ringtone library.
Finally, sync your iPhone. When it’s done, you can head into the settings and select your new ringtone.

Apple OSX

Serial Emulator under Mac OS X

October 31, 2011
by Muhammad

using a FTDI USB to Serial chip adapter and trying to find a good serial emu. for Mac OS X I found this great tip to find out the device which gets installed when you plug your USB-Serial adapter in your Mac and how to use the built in program screen with it:

First, open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Next, type

ls /dev/tty.*

to get a list of your serial lines. Pick the one that you want to open. For example, my list looks like this:

gf:dev gf$ ls -al tty.*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 4 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-Modem
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 8 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 10 Jan 25 09:20 tty.PL2303-0000103D
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 0 Jan 25 07:32 tty.SerialPort-1
gf:dev gf$

And I know /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D is the USB-to-serial adaptor becuase it’s connected, if you unplug it the tty.PL2303-0000103D stops being listed.

Knowing the serial port, you can just type screen portname datarate to show the serial data on the screen. In my case, it was:

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D 9600

To quit the screen app, type control-A, then control-\.

from a post by Greg Ferro

Apple OSX

Hide/Show MAC OS X user

June 8, 2010June 8, 2010
by Muhammad

to hide user in MAC OS X

create the account in System Pref. or by command line

========

sudo dscl . create /Users/$USERNAME
sudo dscl . create /Users/$USERNAME PrimaryGroupID 0
sudo dscl . create /Users/$USERNAME UniqueID 0
sudo dscl . create /Users/$USERNAME UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . passwd /Users/$USERNAME $PASSWORD
sudo dscl . append /Groups/admin GroupMembership $USERNAME

Replace $USERNAME and $PASSWORD with the username and password you want to use.
===============

The new account will be created as a root-level account. If you like, change the PrimaryGroupID and UniqueID to something else.

to see the UID of users

====
dscl . list /Users UniqueID
====

set their UID to be less than 500
to change the UID

====
dscl . -change /Users/will UniqueID 501 1000
====

above command changes UID from 501 to 1000 for user “will”

following command will hide all such users from login window (system pref. accounts window)
====
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow Hide500Users -bool TRUE
====

to hide an account manually use this command
====
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add ‘account1’
====

after hiding the users there can be “others” appearing in the login window. to remove this use this command
====
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWOTHERUSERS_MANAGED -bool FALSE
====

you can use above commands in reverse to show the users in System Prefs. e.g.

command below will show the hidden users in System Prefs and Login windows
====
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow Hide500Users -bool FALSE
====

Apple OSX

Wireshark on MAC

June 3, 2010
by Muhammad

Wireshark under MAC uses X-11 to run and on BSD-flavored systems, such as OS X, libpcap opens a BPF device to do a capture. You’d need to make the BPF devices on your system readable by you in order to capture (you could also run Wireshark as root, but that’s overkill, and runs a rather large chunk of code as root).

You could do

sudo chown {your account name} /dev/bpf*

to do that, but that would have to be done after every reboot. To do that automatically, you could install the ChmodBPF startup item from recent versions of libpcap on your system in /Library/StartupItems and edit the commands in the StartService() shell function in ChmodBPF/ChmodBPF to do the appropriate chown and possibly chmod commands.

Apple OSX

Spamassassin rules

May 27, 2010February 13, 2017
by Muhammad

a good guide is here
http://commons.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/SpamAssassin/SpamAssassin_Rules

#to block combination of words in incoming email’s body

body __LOCAL_PASSWORD1 /\bWAB\b/i
body __LOCAL_PASSWORD2 /\bWestern Academy of Beijing\b/i
body __LOCAL_PASSWORD3 /\bpassword\b/i
meta LOCAL_MULTIPLE_PASS1 (__LOCAL_PASSWORD1 && __LOCAL_PASSWORD3)
score LOCAL_MULTIPLE_PASS1 200
meta LOCAL_MULTIPLE_PASS2 (__LOCAL_PASSWORD2 && __LOCAL_PASSWORD3)
score LOCAL_MULTIPLE_PASS2 200

#to block or notify as spam if a word is present in an incoming email

body LOCAL_PASSWORD /\bpassword\b/i
score LOCAL_PASSWORD 35
describe NO_PASSWORD This rule informs the email recipient that email might be \
spam

#to block emails to certain email addresses

header LOCAL_DISTLIST ALL =~ /^(?:to|cc|):.*itstaff\@wab\.edu/im
describe LOCAL_DISTLIST sent from or to friend@public.com
score LOCAL_DISTLIST 500

Releasing mails from quarantine
Using amavis-release

The utility amavisd-release (amavisd-new-2.3.3 or later) tells the amavisd daemon to fetch a mail from a local quarantine, and send it to MTA through its regular channels ($notify_method), bypassing re-checking.

amavisd-release is included in the amavisd source tarball (which in turn is included in the source rpm), but unfortunately OpenPKG does not install it by default. To manually extract it do the following (this assumes your host distribution has ‘rpm’ installed, but OpenPKG-internal tools should work as well):

$ cp amavisd-.src.rpm /tmp
$ cd /tmp
$ rpm2cpio amavisd-.src.rpm | cpio -idmv
$ tar xzf amavisd-new-.tar.gz
$ cp amavisd-/amavisd-release /kolab/sbin/
$ chown kolab:kolab /kolab/sbin/amavisd-release

By default it connects to socket /var/amavis/amavisd.sock, on which amavisd should be listening for AM.PDP protocol, but one can use inet socket instead of a Unix socket if there is a need to run amavisd-release from a remote host.

In the amavisd.conf.template the following should be added:

# $unix_socketname = “$MYHOME/amavisd.sock”; # listen on Unix socket
$unix_socketname = “/kolab/var/amavisd/amavisd see this site.sock”; # listen on Unix socket

# alternatively (less common):
# $inet_socket_port = [10024, 9998]; # listen on listed inet tcp ports

# apply policy bank AM.PDP-SOCK on a Unix socket:
# (note that this precludes the use of old amavis-milter
# helper program (with sendmail) on the same socket)
$interface_policy{‘SOCK’} = ‘AM.PDP-SOCK’;

# apply policy bank AM.PDP-INET to some inet tcp socket, e.g. tcp port 9998:
$interface_policy{‘9998’} = ‘AM.PDP-INET’;

$policy_bank{‘AM.PDP-SOCK’} = {
protocol => ‘AM.PDP’, # select Amavis policy delegation protocol
auth_required_release => 0, # don’t require secret_id for amavisd-release
};
$policy_bank{‘AM.PDP-INET’} = {
protocol => ‘AM.PDP’, # select Amavis policy delegation protocol
inet_acl => [qw( 127.0.0.1 [::1] )], # restrict access to these IP addresses
# auth_required_release => 0, # don’t require secret_id for amavisd-release
};

Setting of $auth_required_release decides whether the requestor needs to specify secret_id in addition to mail_id to authorize a mail release. The secret_id is stored in SQL table msgs when logging to SQL is enabled, otherwise this information is not accessible.

Note that turning off $auth_required_release check is safe as long as access to the socket is restricted, like with file protections on a Unix socket, or restricted with inet_acl to specific IP addresses. Enabling or disabling $auth_required_release is a management / setup decision and convenience.

To release a mail message an exact quarantine location should be specified as an argument to amavisd-release, e.g.:

$ amavisd-release /kolab/var/amavisd/virusmails/spam-UM3XM3XDbN52.gz

The amavisd-release utility also accepts mail_id from STDIN if releasing more than one message in one go is more convenient:

$ amavisd-release –
/kolab/var/amavisd/virusmails/spam-UM3XM3XDbN52.gz
/kolab/var/amavisd/virusmails/spam-gnwKVFKiuey3.gz
/kolab/var/amavisd/virusmails/spam-Xpkj9mLLBHTR.gz

# allow local networks

header LOCAL_RCVD Received =~ /from.*$.*\[10\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+\]$/
describe LOCAL_RCVD Received from a local machine
score LOCAL_RCVD -5000

# allow local networks and specific email address

header LOCAL_RCVD Received =~ /from \S+\.example\.com\s+\(\S+\.example\.com\s+\[192\.168\..*\s+by\s+mandark\.labs\.example\.com/
describe LOCAL_RCVD Received from a local machine
score LOCAL_RCVD -50

Apple OSX

Apple Handy Guide

May 24, 2010May 28, 2010
by Muhammad

#restart apache server on Apple
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart

#restart amavis
sudo /bin/launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist
sudo /bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist

# postfix
sudo postfix reload
or if you want master to reload
sudo /bin/launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist
sudo /bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

Apple OSX

dotproject installation issues

May 24, 2010May 28, 2010
by Muhammad

deprecated error level issues after installation of the dotproject site

Under PHP 5.x, assigning a return value by reference is the default behavior. Updating the php.ini file will not solve the problem as dotproject overrides the php.ini settings internally. To resolve this issue edit the base.php file. It is located in the root directory for dodproject. Find the line:

error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);

replace it with

error_reporting(E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR_E_CORE_ERROR);

No need to restart.

also add these lines in index.php of your site and phpinfo.php to remove any existing deprecated errors being reported

error_reporting(E_ALL & !E_DEPRECATED);
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED);
error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED);

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