Category Archives: OS X

Splashguard of Departure

Posted on February 3, 2022 by dre

Trivia question: what kind of protection should you wear when calling diff from a Shortcuts.app “Run Shell Script” action? You should affix the Splashguard of Departure, ideally with some +charisma to offset the posix misalignment. This is because “Run Shell … Continue reading →

Posted in development, OS X, Pro Tip, scripts | Leave a comment

os_log haystack needler

Posted on March 25, 2021 by dre

Here’s a method to find where any given NSUserDefault setting is persisted. This might help if you’re trying to write a script to get or set that setting. As a bonus, this post details a reusable strategy for withstanding the … Continue reading →

Posted in OS X, The More You Know, tutorials | Leave a comment

Silence sandbox log spam (or: Why is sandbox logging ALLOWED access?!)

Posted on July 10, 2016 by dre

I’ve been annoyed by sandbox log verbosity since always, but recently I was pushed over the edge when playing with a tool (htop) that calls task_for_pid a lot. It’s open source, so not code signed or entitled. There are various … Continue reading →

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Troubleshooting the Adaptive Firewall in OS X Server

Posted on March 25, 2016 by dre

Recently I did some spelunking into the Adaptive Firewall facility of OS X Server to devise a procedure for troubleshooting a reported failure of AF to block failed SSH logins. Consider this a supplement to this post at krypted. (although do … Continue reading →

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How to rescue aborted QuickTime Player audio recordings

Posted on February 1, 2016 by dre

Know that feeling when you remember you don’t have your keys while you are closing a locked door? It’s the same feeling as when you use QuickTime Player to record some lengthy audio, and you remember you didn’t stop the recording while you are putting the … Continue reading →

Posted in media, OS X, Pro Tip, scripts, The More You Know, tutorials | Leave a comment

Spotlight, UserFilesOnly, kMDItemSupportFileType, and MDSystemFile

Posted on December 6, 2015 by dre

Recently, VMWare Fusion stopped appearing in Spotlight results. Other queries return expected results, and the spotlight index info for Fusion appears OK at first glance via: mdls “/Applications/VMWare Fusion.app” What’s going on, then? To get a different perspective, I tried … Continue reading →

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Traffic micro-management: limit network bandwidth used by an OS X process

Posted on August 8, 2015 by dre

Problem: you have some silly uploader app that only knows one speed: maximum. You would love a way to make that app back off so it doesn’t saturate your uplink and badly impact the other things using your network. Previously in … Continue reading →

Posted in OS X, scripts, The More You Know, tutorials | 3 Comments

PKTAP extensions to tcpdump in OS X

Posted on July 8, 2014 by dre

The tcpdump man page in OS X contains various references to something called PKTAP, such as in the documentation for the -k option: Control the display of packet metadata via an optional meta- data_arg argument. This is useful when displaying … Continue reading →

Posted in OS X, Pro Tip, The More You Know | 1 Comment

How I fixed broken internal audio by zapping pram

Posted on May 10, 2012 by dre

Oops. I think I stole my own thunder. It was a serious wtf moment though… by all rights, I really don’t think this is supposed to happen. The worst part of this experience is not the increasingly frantic hour of … Continue reading →

Posted in mac pro, OS X | Leave a comment

The case of the excessively congratulatory Memory Slot Utility

Posted on October 15, 2011 by dre

A while ago I filled up my final unused memory slot in my awesome Mac Pro with an additional 4 gigorams (for a grand total of 16). Since then, whenever I reboot I’m showered with praise by the Memory Slot … Continue reading →

Posted in mac pro, OS X, Pro Tip, The More You Know | 3 Comments