TinyApps.Org

Hidden files are visible after clean install of OS X Leopard

Facing the same issue described in hidden files now not hidden?? immediately after an Erase and Install of Leopard, I tried:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO; killall Finder
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder
Repairing disk permissions
Verifying/repairing disk
Running software updates

in vain.

Apple tech support suggested Invisible files become visible (involving the use of Pacifist to extract hidden_MacOS9 and SetHidden from the DVD's OSInstall.pkg) to no avail. We decided it must be the install DVD, and they kindly sent another. In the meantime, I tried installing from another Leopard DVD and sure enough, the issue was resolved. So if the above suggestions don't work for you either, try another DVD, or call Apple for a replacement.

Recording video via iSight

Vidnik 0.13.0 [1240k] {S} Record video via iSight and optionally upload to YouTube.

Ilium Software / eWallet: Best Support on the Planet

Lee Stutesman at Ilium Software went WAY above the call of duty today (via toll-free support, no less!) in helping fix our Palm HotSync issue with an ancient version of eWallet. These guys set the standard for shareware support. If Rackspace has "fanatical" support (a fair assesment, BTW), I would call Ilium's "completely and totally berserk" (in a good way - think "spider monkey on crack all over your tech problem" - there is no way that it is going to go unresolved). Thanks to Lee, I have become a lifetime cheerleader for Ilium.

"Logon to Windows" Shut Down button grayed out

Quick registry hack to enable Shut Down button on the login screen:

Head over to: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
Change the shutdownwithoutlogon key value to 1

This may work with any Windows version since 2000 - tested under SBS 2003.

NetworkMiner

NetworkMiner is a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool for Windows. It can detect OSes, hostnames, open ports, and sessions, as well as extract files, without putting any traffic on the network. Additional functions include parsing PCAP files for offline forensic analysis, saving streaming media files (FLV, MP3, etc), and more. Lean, clean, and open source. Review (PDF)

ddrescue 1.8 binary for OS X 10.5

John Gilmore's comparison of dd, dd_rescue, dd_rhelp, and ddrescue reinforces the view that ddrescue is the clear winner for drive recovery. John went to the trouble of providing an OS X binary of ddrescue 1.1 so that others might avoid having to sign up for ADC membership, downloading the 1GB+ Xcode package, and compiling from source. Since 1.1 is now almost three years old, I've compiled the latest version (1.8) under Leopard in hopes it might be of some small use to someone (and I do mean small - it's just 32k): download | screenshot. Use at your own risk (and joy).

UPDATE: Just found a great thread on using ddrescue under OS X.

Automatically click OK (or any button) with ClickOff

While running SysClean on a heavily infected system, the following message kept popping up:

Damage Cleanup Engine (DCE) Virus Found:TSC_GENCLEAN

Each time, the virus scan would not continue until OK was pressed. After several dozen times, this became rather annoying. Thankfully, the small and lightweight ClickOff made short work of this otherwise unpleasant task.

PDF to TXT for OS X

pdftotext 3.01 [556k] Converts PDF to TXT. Hosted version is installer-free.

Logging Print Jobs in Windows

I use a Brother MPrint MW140BT in the field (though not in conditions quite so harsh as these), and wanted a simple way to track the total number of print jobs sent to it. I found the following line in the Event Viewer / System log:

Document 2, Intuit owned by Administrator was printed on Brother MW-140BT via port USB001. Size in bytes: 0; pages printed: 1

but it didn't help much until I came across SysInternals' PsLogList, which is able to count the number of occurrences (in this case starting from the date I changed the paper cartridge) like so:

psloglist -a 01/31/08 | find "printed on Brother MW-140BT" /c

Another possibility (which I haven't looked into) is Karen's open source Print Logger.

Christ On Disk update

Denver kindly informs us that his excellent Christ On Disk project (mentioned four years ago) has a new homepage. Check out the development story, which details his journey to get all 4.5MB of Bible text into a 1.29MB stand-alone application that does not require installation, write to the registry, or create/modify files outside of its own directory.