Category Archives: MacOS

[MacOS] Recommended Apps: QuickSilver

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I. Abstract

You don’t like Spotlight, because it is too slow? But you want to to speed up command execution? Yes there is a nice freeware solution available called QuickSilver by BlackTree. Wikipedia writes: Quicksilver “allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts, or sending e-mail.”

II. Links

You’d better get used to using QuickSilver. We strongly recommend to not use Mac OS without it:

» Download QuickSilver…
» BlackTree Website…

III. Screenshots

QuickSilver 1.png

QuickSilver 2.png

QuickSilver 3.png

[MacOS] Recommended Apps: SimplyRar and MacPar Deluxe

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I. Abstract

Coming from the Windows world most of us people know the .rar archive format very well. Besides the newer 7zip format, Rar allows a good compression and is widely used on internet distribution.

II. What do we need?

People who only need to have a decompressor for compatibility reasons can use MacPar Deluxe. Users who also want to be able to compress files aswell need to get SimplyRar:

» For Uncompressing only use MacPar Deluxe (download here)…
» For Compressing and Uncompressing use SimplyRar (download here)…

III. How do these tools work?

III.I.MacPar Deluxe

MacPar Deluxe is intended for unpacking only. The part of the name Par indicates its main use, as it is a tool for people downloading things from the usenet. Par files are files that contain repair information for damaged main files. Anyway: MacPar Deluxe also contains a very simply unrar engine.

MacRar - MacPar Deluxe.png

III.II. SimplyRar

SimplyRar is a graphical user interface for the free command line version of rar for Mac OS. It contains (almost) all features of the command line. As a switcher I currently cannot tell what features are missing in comparison to WinRar for Windows.

MacRar - SimplyRar.png

[MacOS] System Freeze with 10.5.7 and VMware Fusion

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Abstract

You are running the latest version of “VMware Fusion” (get trial version here) on an original Apple Mac or on a HackMac. During installation of Windows XP or Vista (32 bit) the system crashs with a kernel panic or a complete freeze.

Workaround

Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5.7 update causes some irritation to the 3D acceleration engine VMware Fusion uses. Before installing Windows disable Accelerate 3D Graphics:

vmware3doff.png

Applies to

macosxhints.com report this bug applies to AMD ATI based graphic adapters only.

However in our lab a HackMac with a Gigabyte nVidia GeForce 7600 GT (using Netkas‘ Natit.kext) also crashed again and again during an installation of a german Windows XP Professional with a complete freeze.

Console.app reports:

  • kernel[0]: vmnet: VNetUserIfFree: freeing userIf at 0x7507300.

The memory position may differ to yours.

[MacOS] Yet another Still Waiting for Root Device

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Long time no see to this old friend called “Still waiting for root device”. But with 10.5.7 the time had come again. As some of the tipps we compiled below helped us there is no warranty that it will help you. As the reasons for this funky brother are too indifferent.

Used Hardware

  • Gigabyte GA EP35 DS3
  • Gigabyte nVidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB (Device ID 0x0391)
  • HP w2207 TFT (w/ integrated USB hub)
  • Buffalo AirStation WLI2-PCI-G54S (recognized as Third Party Wireless Card)

What you may try

  • Unplug external USB drives and devices
  • Unplug other internal drives
  • Instead of Rebooting: Shutdown and wait a couple of secs before manually turning your HackMac on again
  • Enable AHCI in BIOS for your drives (in case you see drive icons in orange, apply kexts included with the binaries’ release of Chameleon 2)
  • Try to boot into Safe Mode with -x (see more Darwin flags here) and
    Repair Permissions from within the Disk Utility.app
  • Remove the Extensions.mkext and rebuild it (cf. OSX86Project)
    myMek: rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
    myMek: kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions/
    myMek: kextcache -L -N -e

About our test environment

This is based on the approach to install from the original unmodified retail DVD. Buy it, please. And also go and buy a MacBook (Pro) aswell, you will need it anyway as your HackMac will need special treatments once in a while. A HackMac can never be intended for productive environment. Don’t forget this. No matter what a clone manufacturer or a USB dongle merchant says.

Anyway as we are quite conservative with running systems we don’t feel we need to change to often ways. That’s why we’re still using our own EPOS I. (download here) approach, which is based on Munky’s (more info here) findings.

Good Luck! And don’t forget to buy a Mac :-)

[MacOS] Critical Safari and Firefox Java Exploit

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Abstract

Landon Fuller reports that an almost six months old Java exploit has still not been fixed for Mac OS X. The exploit allows to compromise the Java sandbox in order to break out and run commands with the permissions of the executing user.

Classification

This issue is classified as serious as Java applets containing malicious code may be executed just by visiting a web page. Ladon Fuller says an illegal exploit is available in the wild. He prepared a proof of concept exploit that will make your Mac OS X computer say “I am executing in a user process“.

Applies to

The exploit aswell applies to Intel as to PowerPC based Mac OS X systems running Safari or Firefox.

More information

Some more background information and workarounds may be found on Fuller’s site.

[MacOS] Solutions to Issues with Leopard Update 10.5.7

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Applies to
You are either running an

The following solution has been reported to work on both systems. Chances are good that the solution might be working for you aswell.

Issues
You have been using the auto update feature in Mac OS X to update to 10.5.7. Instead of restarting your system crashs during reboot.

Solutions
You made a backup of your system before, right? Then Restore your backup of 10.5.6, if you didn’t backup: skip this step and give the rest a try anyway.

Native Apple Mac Hackintosh
00. (restore backup of 10.5.6) 00. (restore backup of 10.5.6)
01. shutdown your Mac 01. shutdown your Hackintosh
02. turn it on again and immediately 02. turn it on again and in Darwin boot menu
03. keep holding the SHIFT KEY 03. in Darwin Boot Menu apply these parameters: -x -f
04. you Mac will boot into SAFE MODE 04. your Hackintosh will boot into SAFE MODE and recreate the MKext
05. Login to Leopard 05. Login to Leopard
06. Download Combo Update 10.5.7 (Link) 06. Download Combo Update 10.5.7 (Link)
07. Ignore the Auto Update feature 07. Ignore the Auto Update feature
08. Install downloaded Combo Update 10.5.7 08. Install downloaded Combo Update 10.5.7

In case there is still something fishy. You may try to repair permissions after updating to 10.5.7, by following these additional steps:

09. Boot with your Install DVD 09. Boot with Boot 132 CD and boot your Retail Install DVD
10. Start Disk Utility 10. Start Disk Utility
11. Repair Permissions 11. Repair Permissions
12. Keep Praying 12. Keep Praying
13. reboot 13. reboot

I hope it helps. If you got more suggestions: don’t hesitate to share them in the comments section. Thanks for stopping by our site…

[MacOS] Solution to Microsoft Entourage 2008 Crashing

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Abstract

You are a heavy IMAP user with more than one IMAP account and with hundreds to thousands of mails in the incoming folder. After starting Entourage 2008 it tries to fetch the latest messages, but it just shows no reaction, but the spinning ball. Mac OS X’ activity monitor reports “no response”. Entourage has crashed.

Solution

Although it seems issues have been introduced after updating to a version below 12.1.7, it is the other way round. The latest update fixes a lot issues, but requires to initialize the IMAP configuration.

What to do

  1. Be fast :-)
  2. Start Entourage and…
  3. immediately open Account Settings
  4. Remove your current accounts from Entourage – this will take some time
  5. Close Entourage
  6. Restart Entourage
  7. Add accounts again

We hope this helps. Enjoy…

[MacOS] PearC Clone Supplier admonishs German Blogger

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According to the MacNews.de, the Germany based PearC, besides Psystar the second supplier of Mac clones, admonished the operator of the german blog Caf’é Digital. Café Digital reported about legal concerns of selling ready made Mac clone hardware with pre-installed Mac OS.

For their report, Café Digital used a modified PearC logo and told certain facts, PearC obviously did not want to read in the public. Sadly there is no information about the now censored parts of the Café Digital article about PearC.

We strongly recommend not to use any ready made clone hardware. As all these clone manufacturers are using solutions developed by the InsanelyMac and Hackint0sh community. You may check our EPOS I. installation script – which is provided for educational and for solely non commercial purposes.

If you can not set up a clone Mac yourself, get yourself an original Mac. For most of our every day life’s purposes a (refurbished) Mac Book should be sufficient.

» PearC Germany…
» Café Digital…

» Apple Store Germany (refurbished units)…
» Apple Store U.S. (refurbished units)…
» Apple Store U.S. (clearance units)…
» Apple Store U.K. (refurbished units)…

[MacOS] EPOS I. – EFI Post Install for White-Box PCs

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We were working quite some time on this. Now here is EPOS I. – the “EFI Post Install” Script for white-box PCs that are almost hardware compatible with Apple’s devices

“EPOS I.” is an “EFI Post Install” Script

What does it do?

EPOS helps installing retail DVD’s of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on white-box PC’s. EPOS is SlimBuild-Preboot compliant. And as such it makes installation very easy. Grab a copy of a SlimBuilt-Preboot CD image that matches your hardware (motherboard and graphics), then install Leopard and after installation run EPOS.

Technically EPOS I. automates the necessary steps of preparing MacOS’ native EFI partition and the installation of (legacy-) kexts to this EFI partition. The whole shebang was first discovered and described by Munky (all shouts fly out to him!). You may find his article here on the InsanelyMac forums.

Installation and Usage:

  • unplug ethernet cable from your white-box PC
  • copy EPOS I.zip to USB drive for instance
  • install Leopard from retail DVD using a SlimBuild-Preboot standard compatible CD (find links to tested disks below
  • boot installed Leopard using the SlimBuild-Preboot CD again
  • on first boot provide all the registration information required from Apple
  • see desktop for the first time
  • unpack EPOS I. and run it as ROOT from a terminal (have your SlimBuild-Preboot CD mounted)
  • EPOS takes about a minute to install everything
  • remove SlimBuild-Preboot CD from drive, reboot and let Apple’s autoinstaller grab the newest updates
  • enjoy a white-box Mek

Habit:

  • EPOS must be executed from the disk that will hold the EFI bootloaders.
  • If you are unsure what this means: better make sure you only have your DVD drive and your OS X harddrive connected.
  • I recommend using this script on a clean and fresh installed system, no other operating systems on the same disk!
  • prefers mounted SlimBuild-Preboot CD’s for getting kexts and the com.apple.Boot.plist
    (looks for /Volumes/SlimBuild-Preboot/initrd.img and /Volumes/SlimBuild-Preboot/com.apple.Boot.plist)
    if no SlimBuild-Preboot CD is found, EPOS tries to find Extensions in EPOS’ own Extensions folder

Supports:

  • autoextraction kexts from SlimBuild-Preboot CD
  • kexts in own Extensions folder
  • autoextraction com.apple.Boot.plist from SlimBuild-Preboot CD
  • com.apple.Boot.plist in own Plist folder
  • internally pretested with Leopard retail DVD’s 10.5.0, 10.5.1, 10.5.4 and 10.5.5

Notes:

  • Munky’s EFI Boot 6.1 included (found here)
  • compatible to Galaxy’s SlimBuild-Preboot creator 2.0 (Kudos!) found here
  • Tested with ximekon’s (Kudos, aswell) Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 SlimBuild-Preboot CDs found here

Error handling:

  • integrated for a bunch of common errors, anyway it remains an ugly script

Todo:

  • code cleanup / rewrite ;-)
  • autoinstallation of custom kernels
  • GUI is in the works, but don’t ask for timelines, we all got jobs to feed our families

License & restrictions:

  • This script is freeware but may NOT be used for commercial purposes!
  • It may NOT be included in SlimBuild-Preboot Disks that contain original / modded Apple kexts.
  • that means until not everything is self enabled via homebrew or legacy kexts you may only include it in your private SlimBuilds but don’t distribute them, please.
EPOS 0.95 running on a sample system :


Feedback

You are welcome to leave a note here in the comment’s section or on the insanelymac forums.

Download EPOS

Please download from the version history overview below. Did you know our sponsors yet? No we neither. Because it’s just Google adds. Anyway these premium sponsors really got the coolest offers and moreover by considering them you help us in return maintaining this site free… :-)

Version history:

  • 0.5 semi automatic really much too ugly one day rapid prototype (not released)
  • 0.6 rewrote using functions (not released)
  • 0.7 autodetermining of EFI partition (not released)
  • 0.8 improved error handling for common errors we experienced (not released)
  • 0.9 included autoextraction for SlimBuild-Preboot images (not released)
  • 0.95 included com.apple.Boot.plist extraction (released) –
    » Download EPOS 0.95 here…
  • 0.95.1 (cosmetic) bugfixes (not released)
  • 0.97 com.apple.Boot.plist bugfix (released) –
    » Download EPOS 0.97 here…
  • 10.0 “the got rich as bill from writing even uglier code” version (will definitly be released) ;-)