My Little Pocket Universe
One really nice feature of MacOS is the integration of ssh keys with the OS keychain. This allows you to put a password on your ssh private key(s) that will unlock when you log in. Using this feature, combined with the ssh agent, and you can have a password protected ssh key, and not have … Read more
If you ever have an app that seems to be having problems launching, you can quickly check the integrity with the spctl command: spctl –assess -vv /Applications/<Application>.app As an example, if I wanted to check the integrity of Handbrake (a kick-ass video encoder), the command would be: spctl –assess -vv /Applications/HandBrake.app The output you should … Read more
Unfortunately, since the last OS update for the Mac (Monterey), QuickLook has become especially unstable, especially on my M1 Mac Mini. It doesn’t cause crashes or anything, it simply stops working; especially with video files. However there is a simple solution to the problem. From the Terminal, just run the command (you do not need … Read more
To add an extra layer of security to your server, especially when you are working on a shared client, you can add SSHFP records to the DNS record of the host. This allows the ssh client to pull the hash of the server from DNS to add an extra layer of verification that the host … Read more
If you have the HashKnownHosts option for your ssh client set to yes, then you have a more secure known_hosts file so that a bad actor cannot easily get a list of the hosts you connect to, which is a good idea. However, it also hides it from you, so if you need to remove … Read more
For some bizarre reason, the package management tools for MacOS do not have an option to uninstall in any easy way. However, if you drop into the Terminal, you can do all the steps by hand relatively easily. There is a command called pkgutil that will give you the information you need. To list all … Read more
Traditionally, on *nix systems, cron (or one of its derivatives) is used. It’s possible to use cron on the Mac, but it’s deprecated. launchd is the preferred method. The set up is a little more complex because it’s a bit of XML code, but it’s very straightforward. See the launchd.plist man page or the launchd … Read more
This is a simple, but useful one. If you hate ADs as much as I do, this is a quick solution that gets rid of most of the advertisements in the Apple News app on the Mac. All you have to do is add/modify a line in your /etc/hosts and send traffic for news.iadsdk.apple.com into … Read more
Add the following to the global section: min protocol = SMB2 ea support = yes vfs objects = fruit streams_xattr acl_xattr fruit:appl = yes fruit:metadata = stream fruit:model = MacSamba fruit:veto_appledouble = no fruit:posix_rename = yes fruit:zero_file_id = yes fruit:wipe_intentionally_left_blank_rfork = yes fruit:delete_empty_adfiles = yes fruit:locking = netatalk In the individual shares if you want … Read more