Tag: os x

10.5 Leopard – Change the Version of Apache that Starts Up

A clean install of MacOS X 10.5 Leopard will result in Apache 2 being the default version of Apache that starts up when you enable the web service. If you performed an upgrade to Leopard from a Tiger install then Apache version 1.3 will be the default version of Apache that starts up. MacOS X 10.5 Leopard comes with both versions of Apache. If you need to change the version of Apache that starts up do the following:

  1. Stop the web service if it is running.
  2. Edit the hidden file /var/db/.ApacheVersion with pico or some other text editor
    1. 1 for apache 1.x, 2 for apache 2.x
  3. Restart the web service
  4. The Server Admin app will now display the correct settings for whatever version of Apache you are running
  5. Done.

OS X – How to Change the MAC Address

Changing the MAC address of your network interface card can be useful for a number of things. Here is how you change it in both Tiger and Leopard:

For Tiger (10.4.x) open up the Terminal application and run the command:

sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:00:00:00:00:00

where en0 is the network interface you wish to change the MAC address of, and 00:00:00:00:00:00 is the new MAC address you want the interface to use.

For Leopard (10.5.x) open up the Terminal application and run the command:

sudo ifconfig en0 lladdr 00:00:00:00:00:00

OS X – Read TrueCrypt Images in OS X with OSXCrypt

Up to now, only Windows and Linux users have been able to use the great encryption program Truecrypt. The benefits of TrueCrypt is that it offers VERY secure methods of encryption and the encrypted files it makes can be read on both Windows and Linux computers making it cross-platform and people could share files between the two operating systems. Today OSXCrypt was released which now allows OS X users to create and read TrueCrypt files which will allow cross-platform compatibility with Windows and Linux users. To my knowledge this is the first truly free cross-platform encryption solution available for OS X users and any computer administrator that works in a cross-platform environment knows the value of this. Currently OSXCrypt is a program you run at the terminal so it is not that “mac like” with a pretty graphical user interface. But thanks to the power of open source software, you can bet that in short order someone will develop a nice pretty user interface for it.

Here is a link to the OSXCrypt website where you can read more about it and download the program: Link

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