10.5 Leopard – Display Servers on Desktop

By default mounted server file shares are no longer displayed on the desktop on Leopard as it was in Tiger. You can reactivate this behavior by enabling the Finder preference option labeled “Show these items on the Desktop: Connected servers”. To get to the Finder preferences, click any where on the desktop once and then on the top menu bar click: Finder | Preferences…

Finder preferences

OS X – How to Hide a Partition from the Finder

Go to the Terminal and issue the command:

sudo setfile -a V /Volumes/paritionName

where “partitionName” is the name of the partition or drive that you want to hide. This hides the partition from being seen in the Finder but you can still access it from the terminal such as with scripts.

Open Firmware Password Reset

Pre-Intel processor Macs have something called the “Open Firmware”. This is roughly equivalent to the BIOS on non-Apple PC computers. You can set a password on the Open Firmware which will prevent people from booting off a CD among other things. Here is how you reset the Open Firmware password:

1. Change the amount of memory in the computer. It does not matter if you add or subtract memory. If you only have one stick of memory in your computer or memory must be installed in pairs and you only have a sigle pair, then you may need to buy more memory.

2. After changing the amount of memory, reset the PRAM on the computer by pressing command+option+p+r when you boot it up. When you hear a chime that means the PRAM has been reset. Continue holding down command+option+p+r when you hear the chime and keep holding the keys down until you hear 2 more chimes for a total of 3 chimes. You want to reset the PRAM 3 times to ensure it is truly reset. Doing this 3 times ensures it is definitely reset.

3. Restore the amount of memory that the computer should have.

4. Done. The Open firmware password has now been reset.

10.5 Leopard Time Machine – Disable prompt when mounting new drives

Every time you mount a new drive in Leopard you get a prompt from Time Machine asking you if you want to use that drive for backups. You can prevent this prompt from occurring by issuing the following terminal command:

sudo defaults write com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool YES

Time Machine