macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

GP035: Feb 15, 2005; It's Clutch Time!

My co-worker's Macbook Pro was stolen & recovered (after being re-formatted) earlier this week, and we're trying to figure out if there's any precautions we should take with the laptop itself now it's back.

The thief only had it for one evening before he was caught, but he was able to wipe & re-install OS X. In the worst case scenario I can think of, the thief could have broken into the existing admin account, reset that password, logged in, made a time machine copy of the admin account and then wipe the system.

Highly unlikely, but technically possible. Obviously, my co-worker is changing all passwords and a few company passwords as well.

Are there any other scenarios to be concerned about when the laptop was "out in the wild"?

# ? Apr 26, 2012 21:29

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 11:29

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

G Money posted:

My co-worker's Macbook Pro was stolen & recovered (after being re-formatted) earlier this week, and we're trying to figure out if there's any precautions we should take with the laptop itself now it's back.

The thief only had it for one evening before he was caught, but he was able to wipe & re-install OS X. In the worst case scenario I can think of, the thief could have broken into the existing admin account, reset that password, logged in, made a time machine copy of the admin account and then wipe the system.

Highly unlikely, but technically possible. Obviously, my co-worker is changing all passwords and a few company passwords as well.

Are there any other scenarios to be concerned about when the laptop was "out in the wild"?

1. Assume the data was stolen prior to the machine being erased. Take whatever action necessary based on that assumption.
2. Assume all credentials have been compromised. Change all passwords to all sites and services that could have been used from that machine or whose credentials may have been in chat logs, emails, etc.
3. Assume there is now malicious software installed that you cannot detect. Erase the machine and restore it from a backup.

# ? Apr 26, 2012 21:54

curried lamb of God: Aug 31, 2001; we are all Marwinners

DBFT posted:

You could do it with http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/osx_command_line.html which would give you "subl filename".

As for other editors, check out BBEdit or TextMate. My preference is Sublime Text though.

That worked, thanks!

# ? Apr 26, 2012 22:41

japtor: Oct 28, 2005

Bob Morales posted:

I might have fixed it, I deleted /Volumes/BACKUP, it's probably the hidden one you're talking about :

I'd still do the restart, or at least remount the BACKUP drive. I guess you have some backup script that writes to there? If so it'll still be writing to the boot drive unless you remount the actual drive to show up at /Volumes/BACKUP (since that's still at BACKUP-1 and it sounds like whatever script is writing to BACKUP...and will just make a folder if there's nothing mounted there.

Might be a way around this, like Carbon Copy Cloner looks for drives based on UUID or something, so even if the mount point or there's multiple drives with a common name, it'll know which one to copy to.

# ? Apr 26, 2012 22:52

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

japtor posted:

I'd still do the restart, or at least remount the BACKUP drive. I guess you have some backup script that writes to there? If so it'll still be writing to the boot drive unless you remount the actual drive to show up at /Volumes/BACKUP (since that's still at BACKUP-1 and it sounds like whatever script is writing to BACKUP...and will just make a folder if there's nothing mounted there.

Might be a way around this, like Carbon Copy Cloner looks for drives based on UUID or something, so even if the mount point or there's multiple drives with a common name, it'll know which one to copy to.

When I re-mounted the drive it showed up as BACKUP and the script ran fine.

I think the problem is the script does mkdir -p /Volumes/Backup, so it will just backup to the HD if you don't have that volume present :haw:

I didn't write it.

# ? Apr 26, 2012 23:32

veni veni veni: Jun 5, 2005

How could I go about making sure that everything I save goes to my desktop. I save everything on my desktop and OSX usually remembers that, but 1 out of 10 times it will put things into other folders instead automatically if I don't change it. It's annoying as hell.

# ? Apr 26, 2012 23:42

IUG: Jul 14, 2007

NESguerilla posted:

How could I go about making sure that everything I save goes to my desktop. I save everything on my desktop and OSX usually remembers that, but 1 out of 10 times it will put things into other folders instead automatically if I don't change it. It's annoying as hell.

When you turn 45 or older, I swear this is your default action anyways.

Otherwise, command D for those times that it doesn't get it.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 02:17

do it: Jan 3, 2006; don't tell me words don't matter!

How can I repartition my startup partition to add more space? Disk Utility isn't allowing it.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 03:23

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

do it posted:

How can I repartition my startup partition to add more space? Disk Utility isn't allowing it.

There are various limitations by which Disk Utility is bound. (Some are implementation limitations, some are conceptual, some are file system.) What does your partition setup look like? Do this in Terminal:

code:

diskutil list

And describe what specific repartitioning you're trying to achieve.

Edit: And tell us what version of OS X you're running.

(There's also the possibility you've hit a bug in DU or somewhere below it, but let's start with the above.)

Mikey-San fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Apr 27, 2012

# ? Apr 27, 2012 03:38

do it: Jan 3, 2006; don't tell me words don't matter!

code:

10.6.8

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Backup                  32.2 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS HDD                     327.8 GB   disk0s3

I want HDD to use the remaining free space.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 04:02

Voodoo Cafe: Jul 19, 2004; "You got, uhh, Holden Caulfield in there, man?"

Boris Galerkin posted:

I think there's something wrong with my Superdrive on my MBP and there aren't any Apple Stores hours from here. I've tried putting in two different audio discs and now an OS X SL "Applications Installation Disk" (which is a DVD?) and what happens is that it goes in, some noise gets made that sounds like it's being read, and then the disc ejects itself.

Is this something I can fix myself and how because really the closest Apple Store is like 4 hours away.

Sorry for the hardware derail, but you realize that Apple computers needed repairs before Apple Stores even existed, right? Find an AASP here: http://solutionprofessionals.apple.com/aasp/

It'll be quicker than depot for sure, and if you're out of warranty probably quite a bit less money.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 04:05

Mikey-San: Nov 3, 2005; I'm Edith Head!

do it posted:

code:

10.6.8

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Backup                  32.2 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS HDD                     327.8 GB   disk0s3

I want HDD to use the remaining free space.

It sounds like you're try to expand disk0s3 to use the remaining ~140 GB of the drive. Correct? And you get an error when you do that? (What error?) If so, what happens if you try to resize that to 100 MB less than the amount of unused space?

Edit: If the above is what you're trying to do, where is the unused space? Is it after HDD or between Backup and HDD? (A screenshot of Disk Utility would be helpful.)

Mikey-San fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Apr 27, 2012

# ? Apr 27, 2012 04:12

Into The Mild: Mar 4, 2003

I've had a quick look for something simple i can roll out to our mac users in my office so that when they connect to the work WIFI, it connects to the AFP share in the office..

I've seen a few options, but I'm sadly not understanding them at this moment... does anyone have a nice simple tool i can roll out that they know of?

if not I can knuckledown and learn these commandline tools i found.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 16:23

Manky: Mar 20, 2007; Fun Shoe

Hope I can get a little bit of help here... I need to temporarily spoof my MBP's MAC address to get the network to recognize my Roku box. I followed this site and used this:

code:

sudo ifconfig en1 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

However, it's just not changing. I am trying to change the wireless address, but although that website says to try using Wi-Fi instead of ether in the terminal command, it calls it a bad value. How can I make this work?

# ? Apr 27, 2012 16:34

decypher: Aug 23, 2003; Who else see da leprechaun say yaaaa!

Manky posted:

Hope I can get a little bit of help here... I need to temporarily spoof my MBP's MAC address to get the network to recognize my Roku box. I followed this site and used this:
code:
sudo ifconfig en1 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
However, it's just not changing. I am trying to change the wireless address, but although that website says to try using Wi-Fi instead of ether in the terminal command, it calls it a bad value. How can I make this work?

You're using the x's?

I don't think x is hexadecimal. :P Try something else, like 65-F4-F5-27-83-EA, instead of x's? Or randomly generate your own: http://sqa.fyicenter.com/Online_Test_Tools/Test_MAC_Address_Generator.php

edit: are you getting error messages?
have your tried replacing ether with Wi-Fi: sudo ifconfig en1 Wi-Fi MAC
you're disconnected from the network when you're doing this right?

decypher fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 27, 2012

# ? Apr 27, 2012 17:38

Jolan: Feb 5, 2007

I want to automatically synchronise my home folders on my MB and iMac to a NAS. Can't find any decent apps in the App Store. What would be a good program for me?

# ? Apr 27, 2012 19:07

Manky: Mar 20, 2007; Fun Shoe

decypher posted:

You're using the x's?

I don't think x is hexadecimal. :P Try something else, like 65-F4-F5-27-83-EA, instead of x's? Or randomly generate your own: http://sqa.fyicenter.com/Online_Test_Tools/Test_MAC_Address_Generator.php

edit: are you getting error messages?
have your tried replacing ether with Wi-Fi: sudo ifconfig en1 Wi-Fi MAC
you're disconnected from the network when you're doing this right?

No, I'm not putting Xes - I'm putting the MAC address of my Roku box in, haha. I tried substituting Wi-Fi in but it gave me an error of "Bad Value." Otherwise, no errors pop up. I tried doing it, then restarting Wi-Fi and it still didn't work.

Related question: if I wanted to stream video from my MBP to a Roku box, is there a good solution for that?

Oh, I didn't mention, this is all under Lion.

# ? Apr 27, 2012 19:31

japtor: Oct 28, 2005

Mr Man posted:

I've had a quick look for something simple i can roll out to our mac users in my office so that when they connect to the work WIFI, it connects to the AFP share in the office..

I've seen a few options, but I'm sadly not understanding them at this moment... does anyone have a nice simple tool i can roll out that they know of?

if not I can knuckledown and learn these commandline tools i found.

MarcoPolo is one that's been around for a while, but it looks like there's other options too these days (they showed up when I searched for MarcoPolo). No experience with any of them though.
http://alternativeto.net/software/marcopolo/?platform=mac

Jolan posted:

I want to automatically synchronise my home folders on my MB and iMac to a NAS. Can't find any decent apps in the App Store. What would be a good program for me?

Do you want live and/or two way syncing like Dropbox or just a backup for each? Latter could be done with Carbon Copy Cloner (basically an automated GUI for rsync)...the former is a bit harder to find solutions for. I know there's been projects for it but I don't know the status of them or how well they work right now. I guess search around for "personal Dropbox", "local only Dropbox", stuff like that. Looks like some stuff I remember is here:
http://alternativeto.net/software/dropbox/?platform=mac

japtor fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 27, 2012

# ? Apr 27, 2012 23:15

Hopewell: Nov 29, 2004; I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork.

japtor posted:

MarcoPolo is one that's been around for a while, but it looks like there's other options too these days (they showed up when I searched for MarcoPolo). No experience with any of them though.
http://alternativeto.net/software/marcopolo/?platform=mac

I used MarcoPolo for years until it stopped working well/at all when I upgraded to Lion. Nowadays, I'm using Control Plane. Works like a charm, has an active developer, and has a few more settings than MarcoPolo. Can't recommend it enough.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 00:42

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

Quick question regarding OSX: is there any way to hide files of specific types? I need to show hidden files/folders to work but I don't need to see goddamn .DS_store files all over the place.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 13:53

Into The Mild: Mar 4, 2003

Hopewell posted:

I used MarcoPolo for years until it stopped working well/at all when I upgraded to Lion. Nowadays, I'm using Control Plane. Works like a charm, has an active developer, and has a few more settings than MarcoPolo. Can't recommend it enough.

Thanks that's brilliant!

# ? Apr 28, 2012 17:26

P0PCULTUREREFERENCE: Apr 10, 2009; Your weapons are useless against me!; Fun Shoe

Anyone have a recommendation for an app that wil tag mp3s based on their filename / directory structure? I am recording a bunch of LPs and cassettes, and am not looking forward to tagging every file.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 17:32

some kinda jackal: Feb 25, 2003; �
�

If I boot a mac in verbose mode (as opposed to the grey Apple spinner) does it FORCE an fsck of the root volume?

# ? Apr 28, 2012 19:17

chimz: Jul 27, 2005; Science isn't about why, it's about why not.

Martytoof posted:

If I boot a mac in verbose mode (as opposed to the grey Apple spinner) does it FORCE an fsck of the root volume?

Probably not... Why would it?

If you want to repair the boot partition, boot into the recovery partition and repair it with disk utility from there.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 19:30

wolffenstein: Aug 2, 2002; Pork Pro

Martytoof posted:

If I boot a mac in verbose mode (as opposed to the grey Apple spinner) does it FORCE an fsck of the root volume?

No. Holding Shift while booting (aka Safe Mode) does. Safe Mode doesn't work on FileVault 2 encrypted drives.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 20:21

some kinda jackal: Feb 25, 2003; �
�

Nothing wrong with my drives, I was just curious. Thanks for the answers though.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 20:25

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

My work MBP finally got an enterprise backup solution installed on it so I can stop using Time Machine + Time Capsule at home to back it up.

I'd like to clear all of it's crap off the time capsule to free up space while leaving the backups of my iMac and MBA in place. What's the easiest way to do this? Google didn't quite answer my question - everything said wipe the entire time capsule.

Thanks!

# ? Apr 28, 2012 21:11

wolffenstein: Aug 2, 2002; Pork Pro

Browse the Backups.backupdb folder, and delete the folder corresponding to your work Mac's name. You can find your work Mac's name in System Preferences > Sharing.

# ? Apr 28, 2012 21:19

FCKGW: May 21, 2006

Anyone use any good document management software? Something like Paperless perhaps? I'm planning on moving my large drawer of documents to digital and would like to see what my best options are.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 06:16

Jolan: Feb 5, 2007

japtor posted:

Do you want live and/or two way syncing like Dropbox or just a backup for each? Latter could be done with Carbon Copy Cloner (basically an automated GUI for rsync)...the former is a bit harder to find solutions for. I know there's been projects for it but I don't know the status of them or how well they work right now. I guess search around for "personal Dropbox", "local only Dropbox", stuff like that. Looks like some stuff I remember is here:
http://alternativeto.net/software/dropbox/?platform=mac

Preferably live, but something that backs up every so often (like when shutting the system down or something) would work too. I'll look into the stuff you linked, thanks!

# ? Apr 29, 2012 13:07

lord funk: Feb 16, 2004

Hope this doesn't belong in the Hardware thread...

Finder windows are glitching out when they are halfway between my two monitors. Once they're entirely on one or the other, everything is fine.

MBP 2010. Anyone know what this is?

# ? Apr 29, 2012 18:56

some kinda jackal: Feb 25, 2003; �
�

Whoah, weird. Are both monitors the same bitdepth?

e: Oh nevermind, you can't even pick your bitdepth anymore.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 19:09

carry on then: Jul 10, 2010; by VideoGames
(and can't post for 10 years!)

lord funk posted:

Hope this doesn't belong in the Hardware thread...

Finder windows are glitching out when they are halfway between my two monitors. Once they're entirely on one or the other, everything is fine.

MBP 2010. Anyone know what this is?

Don't know what it is, but I think logging out and back in fixes it. I have a similar problem, but instead of horrible glitching they just become a lot darker, so I think mine at least is a color profile problem.

Lion has a whole bunch of fun graphical issues, I think.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 19:23

some kinda jackal: Feb 25, 2003; �
�

Anyone who's using Safari 5.2 Update 2, go check your Developer downloads section for U3.

I wish they'd send out a notification when that's updated.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 22:59

lord funk: Feb 16, 2004

carry on then posted:

Don't know what it is, but I think logging out and back in fixes it. I have a similar problem, but instead of horrible glitching they just become a lot darker, so I think mine at least is a color profile problem.

Lion has a whole bunch of fun graphical issues, I think.

Oh, you mean like this? (I just disconnected the monitor for a while, reconnected it)

Edit: and yes, logging out and back in fixed it. What a mess.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 23:07

IUG: Jul 14, 2007

lord funk posted:

Oh, you mean like this? (I just disconnected the monitor for a while, reconnected it)

Edit: and yes, logging out and back in fixed it. What a mess.

If the corners didn't have that white, it would look like one of those theming applications were back in style.

# ? Apr 29, 2012 23:29

Choadmaster: Oct 7, 2004; I don't care how snug they fit, you're nuts!

I had that dual monitor window glitch happen once, too. Maybe two or three months ago. Never happened again and I just forgot about it.

# ? Apr 30, 2012 04:21

carry on then: Jul 10, 2010; by VideoGames
(and can't post for 10 years!)

I think it has to do with plugging and unplugging the monitor. I suspect if this was just a dual-monitor desktop situation I wouldn't see it nearly as often as I do, disconnecting and reconnecting the external on a daily basis. I'm hoping these issues are ironed out in 10.8.

# ? Apr 30, 2012 07:31

Last Chance: Dec 31, 2004

Martytoof posted:

Anyone who's using Safari 5.2 Update 2, go check your Developer downloads section for U3.

I wish they'd send out a notification when that's updated.

Wow, update 3 completely changes the developer toolbar.

http://f.cl.ly/items/1e1T2d1U1n3I081A022l/Screen%20Shot%202012-04-30%20at%2011.10.21%20AM.png

# ? Apr 30, 2012 17:11

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 11:29

The Macaroni: Dec 20, 2002; ...it does nothing.

Is there a separate iLife/iPhoto thread, or is this the place to ask questions about that?

# ? Apr 30, 2012 20:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

«‹›1098 »