macos-users

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12 discussions

[Macos-users] Thunderbolt Ethernet dongle stopped working due to silent security update, may also affect iMacs
by Jos Vermeulen 22 Jul '16

22 Jul '16

Dear Macintosh users, In case your Ethernet connection via a Thunderbolt Ethernet dongle stopped working: Apple has silently pushed last week a security update that caused the driver of the Ethernet interface to be blacklisted. I understand that this may not only affect Thunderbolt dongles but also Ethernet interfaces of iMacs. I have found that for my laptop this update occurred Friday evening. The effect of it became apparent yesterday morning: after booting there was no network connection: in the System Preferences (Network panel) it was reported that there was no connection via the dongle. I have spent most of the day yesterday to get the connection working again, as I found many reports with Google on problems with these dongles and recipes to get them working again. However, I did not succeed to solve the problem. In the afternoon I concluded that my dongle could be faulty and went to an iCentre shop, taking the dongle with me. There it showed the same problem as I had seen, so the conclusion was that the dongle was broken and I purchased a new one. That also did not work with my laptop, but then I realized that I could boot from an older version of MacOS that I have on a portable disk. Both dongles worked. Not yet knowing about the update of the evening before I started to look further for a cause of the problem, without success, but at the end of the afternoon Google started to find reports on the silent update. After some time also a recipe appeared of how to solve the problem and this worked for me. For more information see: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/47tfos/warning_software_update_0315… and: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/software-update-031-51913-will-break-yo… It is not clear to me whether it is necessary to disable system integrity checking for the fix to be applied, in any case this worked for me (taken from the mail from fropmeister of the last mailing list): "1) Disable system integrity protection as described in this article: http://www.imore.com/el-capitan-system-integrity-protection-helps-keep-malw… 2) Once you reboot, open a terminal window and move the broken version out of the way with the following commands: cd /System/Library/Extensions sudo mv AppleKextExcludeList.kext ~ (this will move it to your user's home directory, just in case. enter your login password when prompted.) Now that that's done, install the package from the linked file and reboot. When I did that my thunderbolt adapter started working again, no reconfiguration required. If everything's working, you can clean up as follows: 1) Open a terminal window again, and type "sudo rm ~/AppleKextExcludeList.kext" (and enter your password again if needed) 2) Reboot into the recovery console and re-enable system integrity protection as described in the above article." The package referred to is this: http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...1zfy5lkrw3v1oe/AppleKextExcludeList_1… Best regards, Jos Vermeulen

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[Macos-users] Switching off of silent security updates
by Jos Vermeulen 28 Feb '16

28 Feb '16

In my previous mail on the problem with Ethernet I did not specify that I am running MacOS version 10.11.3 (latest version of El Capitan). Silent security updating can be switched off with this command: softwareupdate --schedule off to be run as root or using sudo, Jos Vermeulen

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[Macos-users] Printer problemen
by Bart van der Wal 22 Feb '16

22 Feb '16

Dear Macos-users, As you may have noticed some problems with the Xerox printers and OSX have resurfaced. If you send a document to the Xerox printers one or more "Status" jobs will appear before and after your real print job. These jobs will time-out after a while and only then will your real print job be send to the printer. Some people report seeing these jobs other people only see the delay they cause. The type, delay and location of the jobs seems to vary per OSX version and Xerox printer driver version. It is a mess. There is one work-around/solution. If you use the generic postscript printer driver you will not have the delay. You will not have full access to all printer functionality. Duplex and color printing are available. The problem will probably be solved at some point, but it could take a while. It took more than a year last time. Kind regards, Bart van der Wal -- Bart van der Wal Computer Technologie Nikhef 020-5922280

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[Macos-users] Inlog scherm bij eduroam of nikhef wirless netwerk
by Bart van der Wal 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

Beste MacOS gebruikers, Ik hoorde via Frank dat er mensen zijn die er last van hebben dat er een inlog scherm verschijnt als je gebruik maakt van eduroam of NIKHEF. Dit zou een bekend probleem zijn en de oplossing het wegklikken van het scherm. Dit is inderdaad een bekend probleem, maar er is ook een permanente oplossing. Zover ik weet komt dit probleem niet meer voor als je eduroam en NIKHEF instelt met het configuratie bestand de we op de wiki hebben staan. http://www.nikhef.nl/pub/departments/ct/eduroam_nikhef.mobileconfig Dus als je last hebt van dit schermpje installeer dan het bovenstaande configuratie bestand. Dit geld alleen voor OSX 10.6 en hoger. -- Bart van der Wal Computer Technologie Nikhef 020-5922280

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[Macos-users] CyberDuck
by Harry van der Graaf 05 Dec '14

05 Dec '14

On my new MacBook Pro 15, Cyberduck didn’t work anymore. I downloaded a newer version, but that does not allow certain things, one first has to pay. Is this a known problem? Is there an alternative for CyberDuck? Regards, Harry PS My new MacBookPro 15, with Yosemite, is really fantastic: very fast, simpeler & cleaner.

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[Macos-users] Maverick: printing problems
by Harry van der Graaf 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

I installed Maverick on my (office) miniMac and my MacBook Pro. It looks like printing does not show the two ‘halt’ jobs anymore, but the delay is still there, and can not be dropped…… Re-installing a printer does not help. ? Harry

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[Macos-users] Fwd: Free Drawing app in Mac OS X?
by Panagiotis Tsopelas 09 Jan '14

09 Jan '14

Hi all, I am interested in making drawings/schematics of simple geometries including angles, distances, axes etc. Which free app would you suggest me to get for Mac OS X? Sorry for the spam, Panagiotis

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[Macos-users] Security: prevent Guest access!
by Arne de Laat 11 Dec '13

11 Dec '13

Hello all, Sometimes when I have spare time I click around to see which Mac users forgot to disable Guest sharing. Unfortunately this sometimes turns out to be quite a number of people (see fig: GuestEnabled). Some even allowing read and write access to certain directories which you probably don't want (e.g. ~/). What is this Guest sharing I speak of? In the Finder sidebar we see this nice list of other Macs and PCs on the network (see fig: Network). This can be used to easily find a networked computer to initiate file or screen sharing. When Guest sharing is enabled this allows other to login as a Guest to access some shared files (see fig: GuestAccess). Guest sharing is ENABLED by default on new Macs. By default this only allows guests to access the Public folder in your home folder (~/). This Public folder is read and write for you and read only for everyone else. However, it contains a folder called 'Drop Box' that is write only for everyone else. This means that guests can 'drop' stuff into this Drop Box. As seen in the screenshot above (fig: GuestAccess), that particular Mac only has 29 GB of free space left. If you are on a network with evil people (e.g. a conference with people from a competing experiment), they could simply try to fill your dropbox with 29 GB of random stuff, like so: $ dd if=/dev/zero of=[path to Drop Box]/dump bs=1 count=0 seek=29g Which would mean your hard drive would fill up, causing problems with virtual memory, saving of files, crashes, etc. And it would probably take you some time to figure out the cause. Ok, so how do you prevent this? Luckily, that is very simple! - Open your SystemPreferences - Go to User & Groups - Click the Lock (bottom left) if it is closed to allow changes - Go to the Guest User - Disable 'Allow guests to connect to shared folders' (see fig: UsersGroups) And you're done.. You can also check the File Sharing settings in the Sharing PreferencePane, to see if you were perhaps sharing other folders. Note; Disabling Guest sharing does not prevent you from access file sharing using your username & password, as long as you leave file sharing enabled. Greetings, Arne HiSPARC - FOM Nikhef

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[Macos-users] Faster printing in OS X 10.9
by Arne de Laat 03 Dec '13

03 Dec '13

Hello all, In the e-mail from Wim when he started this group, he mentioned that there were some problems with printing in OS X 10.9: > From: Wim Heubers <w.heubers(a)nikhef.nl> > > We have run in the following print problems after upgrading to OS-X 10.9: > > 2. The existing problem with the printer status jobs still exists, but > now you can not remove these jobs yourself anymore, which results in a > unwanted delay before the print output becomes available in the printer > system. We have contacted the supplier of the printer software. > > -- CT Beheer > Wim I know of a way to address problem #2. These status jobs can be made visible using the CUPS web interface. To enable the interface, simply open your Terminal and enter: cupsctl WebInterface=yes If you ever want to disable it, simply use the same command but with 'no' The CUPS web interface can be reached in your browser via: http://localhost:631 The interesting page here is: http://localhost:631/jobs/ When you start a print job those 'status jobs' will be visible on that page Cancel all the jobs with a size of 1k, the interface will ask for you username and password once. Once all those status jobs have been canceled your real job will start printing. Thanks to dr. David Fokkema for figuring this out. Greetings, Arne HiSPARC - FOM Nikhef

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[Macos-users] if your adobe reader freezes...
by Olya Igonkina 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Hi all, This tip might be of interest for you : http://wccftech.com/turn-app-nap-specific-applications-os-mavericks/ Practically Maverick puts some applications to "sleep", when not used. For my laptop busy with Vidyo that resulted in Adobe Reader to be super slow, as by the time people on the meeting would get to next page, my pdf would freeze [==asleep] and it would take ages to turn a page. By then the speaker would naturally be few pages ahead - very annoying if you chair the meeting... After I have disabled this AppNap for AdobeReader, I did not have delays anymore [so far]. Also vidyo and cern webcast seem to take insane amount of CPU after upgrade.. Cheers, Olya -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Olga Igonkina NIKHEF Postbus 41882 Tel: +31 (0)20 592 5038 1009 DB Amsterdam Fax: +31 (0)20 592 5155 The Netherlands ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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