Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with osx and tiger

Mac problems with password resetting and broken screens

wile e — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:37:07 -0800

Calling all Mac experts out there. I have a tricky one. This is a long one, but if you do have the time I would appreciate taking a look. There is a summary on the bottom for those that are less inclined to read through.

Ok, I have in my possession a Powerbook G4 in my possession. Original owner ran it over with a car. Laptop survived, screen did not. Original owner left it for dead. About a year later, I took it off his hands to work with on an external display. Works great, no irregular functionality.

The catch. I have to use the guest account as the original owner doesn't remember the admin password. So I borrowed a copy of Leopard from a friend and tried to reset the password from there. However since the install disk won't recognize the second monitor, I have to get lucky to pick the correct option to get to the Mac OSX Installer screen. From here I chose the password reset popup, reset the password for the admin account I wanted, and I restarted.

Now heres the fun part, when it rebooted, there no longer is any admin accounts. Only the guest account is available. I go back to the installer page and in the reset passwords dialog, no more accounts show for me to reset the password.

So my only option now is to do a complete reinstall of the OS. Except I do not see how from the installer page, and I without being able to use the external as the primary display I am stuck.

So as a summary:

Powerbook G4 with tiger and a broken screen that has no admin accounts anymore.

Need to either be able to make the external monitor as the primary not in the OS, but permanently.

or

To be able to do a complete clean install of Leopard on the system, with the catch of being done from an external monitor.

Now as a bonus question, if I were to disconnect the laptop screen, unplug it, would the computer default to the external display?

control-clicky wiki

artdrectr — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:00:56 -0800

OSX (Tiger): Using Control-Click > Quick Search, I want to add Wikipedia to the list. How?

Looking for a Countdown Timer That'll Go Higher Than 99 Hours

interrobang — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:55:41 -0800

I'm looking for an OSX application, widget, or menubar item that will display a countdown to a date. Ideally, I'd be able to set it for, say, May 14th, and it'll show me how many months, days, hours, and seconds are left until the date. It'd be even better if I could run more than one of these timers at a time. I need this to work on Tiger, but Leopard stuff could be useful, too. Thank you!

OSX upgrade to OSX Server: Headache free?

chillmost — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:55:11 -0800

I will be upgrading a MacPro running 10.4.11 to 10.4.11 Server. What, if anything, could go wrong? My company has a MacPro file server with a client version of Tiger running. As the number of employees has grown that need to get and place files, we often run into the 10 user limit imposed by Apple's client OS, hence the update to Server. There are some other advantages to this as well, but the unlimited clients and connections is the main plus for us. I have a few questions about this, the answers to which I could not find out in the tubes. This either means that it is a relatively painless process, or I'm not using the right search terms.

1. Will the user accounts remain untouched? The accounts themselves will probably remain okay, but what about user preferences? Finder? Other Apps?

2. Will people that connect to the server have to recreate the aliases they use to do so? Not much of a big deal but it'll be nice to know what to expect on Monday morning when my phone's ringing and people are complaining that they can't connect to the server.

3. Are there any other changes that I'm not thinking of that might cause a headache after I update?

Note: we are staying with Tiger because of a change in the way Leopard handles text encoding in applescript which would cause all of our scripts to break. The time it would take to rewrite them all would be huge.

Man Attempting to Move Leopard

indiewizard — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:41:38 -0800

Great MeFites, I come bearing but a humble request. I bought a MacBook Pro about six months before Leopard was released. When it finally came out, I installed it on a partition on an external drive, which I would boot from (because OS X is awesome like that, amirite?) so I could test out all my apps. Now I'm ready to commit to Leopard full-time - what's the best way to go about transplanting my Leopard partition? In my head, I would copy everything precious to the external drive, and then go into Disk Utility and select "Restore" (I'm not in front of my Mac right now, so I don't know the exact option, but it's a tab that comes up in the main pane when you select the root drive in the left-hand pane), where I would select Leopard as the source, and my internal drive as the destination. However, the internal drive is just slightly bigger than the Leopard partition - would this present a problem?

Also, what are my other options? Specifially, Carbon Copy Cloner comes to mind - is this what I need?

Also also, I would like to merge my Adium chat logs - any programs available? If this isn't possible, I'll settle for simply copying them to my Documents folder, and using Spotlight.

A thousand thank-yous in advance.

Major crashes with OS X 10.4 (on a G5 iMac). Bad hardware?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:18 -0800

Major crashes with OS X 10.4 (on a G5 iMac). Bad hardware? It looks like I'll have to take it in for repairs, but maybe there's a software fix? My iMac G5 crashes: not the nice multilingual Mac Screen Of Death but really serious crashes -- the screen turns into regular patterns of noise and I have to reboot. When this began happening it would boot up, run for five minutes and then it would happen again. Then it got worse.

I looked into the system.log and the panic.log and there were messages there about Graphics Card errors, mentions of Frames, and the messages were coming from kernel level (I wish I could post them here but it won't even boot any more).

I did all the obvious things I could think of, zapped the PRAM, fixed permissions, verified the disk, and I even reinstalled the whole OS.

I'm assuming that I have some hardware problem, i.e. a bad graphics card.

But one thing's nagging at me. During the reinstall of the OS, which took a good twenty minutes to half an hour, the computer stayed up and running just fine, when it was working off the kernel/drivers on the DVD.

So, is that a clue that there could still be a software fix? Something to do with the drivers that I could fix without taking it in to a shop to repair?

Grateful for any suggestions.

Syncing a Razr? More like STINKING A RAZR

Sticherbeast — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:24:33 -0800

iSync question: I'm trying to use a USB cable to sync a Razr V3 with iSync 2.4 on an iBook G4 running Tiger, but something's not clicking. iSync recognizes the phone and it claims to Sync it, but nothing gets added to Address Book. What's the deal? The iBook doesn't have Bluetooth capability, so I can't use that. While I don't expect miracles, I'd also be very interested in learning how to get the photos off of this phone and onto the computer, without simply pix messaging an email address over and over again.

Tiger help! Why are my wireless and spotlight icons missing from the upper right hand corner of my toolbar?

radiocontrolled — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 13:35:24 -0800

Tiger help! Why are my wireless and spotlight icons missing from the upper right hand corner of my toolbar? I run Mac OS X 10.4.11 on my 12" powerbook g4. When I turned on my computer today, the spotlight and wireless icons were missing from my toolbar.

I can access the spotlight through finder. However, I can't connect to the internet. Please help me fix this!

Thanks!

Please help my dock and apps play nicely together

bricoleur — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:15:01 -0800

On my Mac (Tiger), I prefer to have the dock at the bottom, hidden. But all my applications insist on opening new documents and windows so that the new window touches the bottom of the screen. As a result, it often happens that when I go to resize the window by grabbing the bottom right corner, I invoke the dock instead. Usually, a second try will be successful, but this is annoying as heck. Is there a global setting that will tell my applications to stay out of that last quarter inch of my screen? Or some other solution to this?

Help my ailing iBook!

annabellee — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:35:26 -0800

MacTechFilter: Is this strange activity in my console log the reason my iBook is freezing up? I posted a few weeks ago about my iBook G4 freezing at seemingly random moments and not responding to anything but a hard restart.

Original question here: http://ask.metafilter.com/72204/How-to-get-iBook-G4-to-stop-freezing-up
(There's no option to hyperlink or format in this text field for some reason)

As advised in the responses, I checked my console.log and system.log files right after it froze this morning and found in my system log:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **

followed by about 1000 lines that look like this:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x01005c63 4f000217 00000007 00000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x02007c43 c0001c04 00000002 00000008
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x00004443 01e1f8b7 00003b3b 80010140
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x4000ffff 001e0000 51b3a220 72001005
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x080a0f00 00000000 040100f8 80000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x0008bbbb 00000002
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0:0x0021e110
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 1:0x80000000
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 2:0x000101ce
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 3:0x10264600

The numbers before the colon go up to 1023 each time.

These are the final lines before the time at which I restart the computer:

Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 1023:0xffffffff
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 0x5d56f250
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log End **
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 5, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140. VAP_CNTL_STATUS 0x00000002
Oct 20 08:49:26 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

Entering ** ASIC Hang Log Start ** and ** ASIC Hang Log End ** in Google give me only people who had this problem with eMacs, mostly several years ago.

Can anyone help?

How to get iBook G4 to stop freezing up.

annabellee — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:39:36 -0800

[iBook G4 filter]: My Mac keeps freezing and responds to nothing but a hard restart. About two and a half weeks ago, my iBook started freezing randomly. The keyboard stops working totally and the only thing I can do is move the mouse pointer with the trackpad (can't highlight anything, can't get hidden dock to show). Sometimes I get a spinning beachball for a second but usually it just shows an arrow cursor. The only way I've been able to get it to work again is with a hard restart (pressing the power button).

Lately I've noticed the I can count on it freezing up when I unplug the power cord, plug in the power cord, or unplug the speakers. It still freezes at other times, but this is a guaranteed way to make it happen.

I've done extensive Googling on OS X boards to try and find help.
I have run: Disk Utility to repair permissions; started in single user mode and gotten a clean bill of health from Disk Utility, installed and run Cocktail (which seems to just clean caches), installed and run Applejack AUTO. All give me a "nothing's wrong" report at the end.

I do NOT have my Tiger disk (Grrr, misplaced) so I'm trying to avoid the "nuke and pave" option if I can attribute the freezing to a software issue/repair the hardware myself.

Vital stats: iBook G4, purchased 1/2004, running OS 10.4.10, 1GHz PowerPC, 640MB DDR SDRAM. Approximately 12 GB free on 60GB hard drive. Applecare expired. Running Tiger for a year with no problems. Most memory-intensive programs used regularly: Quicksilver, Firefox. My battery is not eligible for the replacement program.

Please help! Happy to answer any further questions if needed.

How to install Mac OSX clean without the original discs?

rsanheim — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:08:15 -0800

How can I install Mac OS X on an older Macbook Pro without the original discs? My boss recently got a brand new Macbook Pro, and so I received his old 15" Macbook Pro to do dev work on. I'd like to reinstall a clean install of Tiger, not only to remove cruft but also to save some space by only installing the apps I really need. The problem is that the original discs are lost, and it seems no other install discs will work.

I've tried original discs from the new Macbook Pro, a new Mac Mini, and our discs from our Apple Developer subscription. All give the same error message very early in the installation and won't continue: "This software cannot be installed on this computer."

We have the 10 seat ADC subscription and a AppleCare for all our machines, but I was wondering if there was some solution that didn't require sitting on hold for customer service or waiting in line at the "genius" bar.

What are the best Safari plugins?

jroybal — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:26:21 -0800

What are the best Safari plugins? I recently bought my first Mac, a MacBook, and now I've switched to Safari. What are some Safari plugins that I should be using? Preferably free. Mac OS X Tiger, 10.4.10, Safari 3.0.2 Beta. I've seen some related threads on here, but they're kind of old, and there's no mention of Safari 3 Beta.

Two things specifically, but really anything that would be useful.
1. Something that would give me more control over tab behavior
2. An ad-blocker

Thanks very much.

OS X kernel panic after HD added

spock — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 12:32:36 -0800

OS X kernel panic after adding new HD. This is OS X Server (10.4.8) and I'm experiencing kernel panic at startup after upgrading a hard drive. I had two 75 gig HDs. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the original startup drive to the 2nd hard drive. After cloning I confirmed that I could start up off the 2nd drive (which I made bootable). Then I removed the original drive and put in a 300 gig HD in place of the original. Still booting off the cloned 75 HD I now experience kernel panic.

So what did I do wrong?

Help me with search in Tiger

dondiego87 — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:03:35 -0800

I'm having some trouble constructing a search in the latest iteration of my favorite operating system. I love the idea of Smart Folders, and I keep coming up with cool ways to implement them. But I keep running into problems of two main kinds - not being able to use NOT logic and it not finding things. The first type - the conspicuous lack of NOT logic in search criteria - is the one I'm just disappointed about. I really don't know if there's anything to do about it, but any advice would be awesome. An illustration, you say? Sure thing! I really want to have a "Graveyard" folder where all the applications I download just to try out can go after I don't use them for a while. Now, I know there are ways to do this that I've seen on sites like Lifehacker and such, but I decided to try to do this using Smart Folders. It should be simple enough, right? Two criteria: 1.) File is in folder "Applications" and 2.) Last Opened is not within the past 3 months. Try doing the second one. I'll wait...... Impossible, huh? Why would Apple leave out so basic a feature? Have Steve & Co. forsaken me? Is there any way to incorporate NOT logic into search criteria?

Second question: I'm trying to make a folder that contains all the photos from my latest iPhoto library. Don't ask questions. Anyway, I specified "Kind = Images." No problem there; it found several thousand. Then I tried to specify that the images be inside my iPhoto library. So I specified "File Pathname: Contains: 'iPhoto Library_3'" (which is, I've checked, the name of my library's root folder). 0 images found! Why?

[No Mac-bashing, please...... That's for a different thread. Just helpful comments. Thanks!]

XML/XSLT rendering issue?

hummercash — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:09:54 -0800

[XML/XSLTFilter] 10.4.8 and Safari let me search an XML database, but they can't seem to display the results properly (they're just a jumbled mess). IE6 and IE7 on XP Pro have no problems handling the same search and the results are displayed in a nice table. I was able to look at some of the code and it looks like something with XML data islands and XSLT stylesheets may have something to do with OS X's problem rendering the results. We've also tried multiple browsers in OS X (IE, Firefox, Opera) with similar results.

Does anyone have any more insight as to what might be the issue here? I'm not very familiar with XML and XSLT.

If worse comes to worse, Parallels is always an option but I'd rather not have to buy XP just for one thing.

Thanks.

.//chris

Please help me GLOBALLY DISABLE font smoothing (anti-aliasing) in Tiger

allterrainbrain — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:13:48 -0800

Please help me GLOBALLY DISABLE font smoothing (anti-aliasing) in Tiger. I did it almost-completely in Panther, but the Panther solution needs another step in Tiger. Yes, I'm positive I don't want font smoothing. :)

So here are the two commands I found to use in Panther. Both need to be done as root.
defaults write -g AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 128
defaults write CoreGraphics CGFontDisableAntialiasing YES

(I assume 128 could be any number and it's just "something bigger than the biggest font size you expect to ever use.")

In Tiger (on Intel), using these doesn't work to disable anti-aliasing in the menu text across the top of the screen.

My Panther machine (which I still have, if you want me to report anything about it) is definitely using non-anti-aliased Lucida Grande on all the top menus -- whether in Finder or in any app. HOWEVER, I never got the other kinds of system text (dialog boxes, Preference panels, etc.) to stop using anti-aliasing. So the font rendering in the menus is somehow different from the rendering in other kinds of "system" text.

Unfortunately I didn't keep a record of everything I did in Panther, and it's been a few years now -- I only remember it as a long, roundabout process of googling & trying different solutions. So it's likely that something else I did in addition to these two commands made the top menus stop using anti-aliasing. So what could that extra something have been??

(TinkerTool and its siblings aren't the answer, since their option for disabling font smoothing seems to be just a graphical frontend for the AppleAntialiasingThreshold command above. But of course I'd hugely appreciate any tip about a tweaking app I missed that goes further -- that got rid of anti-aliasing in your top menus, not just inside your apps, in Tiger.)

Issue reinstalling OSX 10.4 (Tiger) on my MacBook Pro

freshgroundpepper — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:50:59 -0800

I've got a MacBook Pro that currently has Max OS X 10.4.7 installed on a single partition (no boot camp). I'd like to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall OSX 10.4 from scratch, but I'm running into some issues. I've got an ADC (apple developer connection) membership, so I've got a couple of OSX install DVDs lying around. The two OS X install discs that I can find are a 10.4.3 and a 10.4.6 disc. Both discs say on their packaging and on the "readme" PDF that they require a Mac with PowerPC G5, G4, or G3 Processors. They don't say anything on them about the build on them being Universal or that they support Intel processors.

When I insert either of them and click on the "Install Mac OS X" icon, I get an error message saying: "Mac OS X 10.4 cannot be installed on this machine. Please consult the documentation for the list of supported Macintosh computers."

I assume that this error is because the disc seems to be a PowerPC only disc and not a universal/intel one. I've also tried to just boot with the DVD in and holding down "C" (so that it boots from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive). The disc spins up but then it launches back into OSX.

I think that the 10.4.3 disc came with my ADC membership, so it could make sense if they sent out a PowerPC only one for that. I'm almost positive that the 10.4.6 disc came with the MacBook Pro, but that doesn't seem right because it's not compatible with my system.

Do the Intel-based macs come with a DVD that is Intel-compatible? Am I just not finding the right disc, or did my Mac not ship with a disc that I can actually reinstall with? For anyone else with a MacBook Pro (or other intel mac), did you get a disc that specifically says that it's universal/works with Intel processors?

Help me revive my powerbook after a security update.

odinsdream — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 08:48:37 -0800

After installing the most recent security update for OS X, my PowerBook G4 no longer boots. I've gone through the generic troubleshooting steps on Apple's site, and even paid for the phone support, but couldn't get any better answer than "Archive and Install," which I can't do due to lack of free space. Please help me fix this hopefully simple problem. Software Update prompted me to install a Security Update, and Quicktime 7.1. I unchecked Quicktime, and just installed the security update. When prompted to shut down or reboot the laptop, I continued working in Firefox for a few minutes.

I tried to open TextEdit, but the dock icon appeared and disappeared. Same with Stickies. When I left the laptop to get some tea, the password-protected screensaver came on, but upon moving the mouse, no password box would appear. I was thus forced to just kill the power to get the laptop to shut down.

I had previously enabled verbose mode booting in the open firmware, so when the box booted, I could see where it hung up. After bringing up the network drivers, a line beginning with the date and ending with "Login window application started" repeated itself every few seconds forever. Normally, this is where the laptop jumps to the GUI. But, now it just hangs there.

I tried resetting the PRAM, which caused the laptop to no longer boot in verbose mode, but now it just hangs at the gray apple spinner screen. If I force Verbose mode by holding Command+V, I still see the repeated line:

Jun 3 11:45:34 farscapetwo /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started.

That line is repeated every few seconds, with some timestamps being identical, others a few seconds apart.

I tried running disk utility from the OS X Tiger install DVD. The Repair Disk option found a "minor header problem" and fixed it successfully (running a 2nd time finds no errors).

I tried using Terminal from the install DVD to move all of the StartupItems out of their normal folder.

I cannot boot into Safe Mode by holding down the Shift key. I can boot a CD/DVD, and go to Single-User Mode, and get into the Open Firmware.

I don't have another Mac to use firewire target-disk mode.

I went through all of the above before calling (and paying for *shakes fists*) Apple tech support. They were unable to give me any new advice, and suggested an Archive and Install. I do not have enough free space for this - nor do I really think that's a "solution."

Please help, and let me know if I can provide any other details.

Upgrading a DVD-less Powerbook

vacapinta — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:21:15 -0800

How to install Tiger (OSX 10.4) on a Powerbook with a broken DVD drive? So far I've been able to use that Powerbook just fine, getting everything through either the Internet or through an external drive (USB) but now I'd like to actually upgrade it. How can I do this? What are my options?

Battery first, then upgrade? Upgrade first, then battery?

logovisual — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:55:46 -0800

PotentiallyStupidQuestionFilter: I'm looking to juice up my long-in-the-tooth titanium Powerbook (from March of 2002 -- 667 mHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, 30GB harddrive, etc.) with both a new battery (since the original one now gets approx. five minutes of life when unplugged) and OS X 10.4. Here's the weird question: Should I put the battery in first, and then update the OS, or do the OS update and then swap in the new battery? It might not matter at all, but I know that operating systems do have an impact on battery performance -- is that something I should be taking into consideration, or can I do either upgrade at any time without worrying about sequence?

Tiger's QuickTime Misperforming on an iBook G3?

WCityMike — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:35:09 -0800

Ever since upgrading to QuickTime 7 and Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), I've noticed that apparently what I think is the H.264 and H.267 codecs play very choppily on my machine. The audio track doesn't freeze, but the video stops, then moves forward slightly choppily, then goes forward, then repeats the cycle a few seconds later, making the resulting video mostly unviewable. I've noticed this specifically on videos from the iTunes Media Store and Apple Movie Trailers.

My machine isn't horribly ancient, but it's not top-of-the-line, either: an 800 mHz iBook G3 with 640 MB RAM (which is the maximum available for this unit). I know the G3 is at the hind end of the pack nowadays, but I can't believe it's been entirely ignored when these codecs were tried out at Apple.

I have tried three things: increasing the QuickTime cache (no effect), reducing the number of open applications at the time (very little or no effect), and letting the whole video load before trying to play it (very little or no effect).

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Photoshop has disappeared...

NewGear — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 13:08:15 -0800

[OSX] After installing Tiger on my iBook (and using Software Update to upgrade to the latest version), I am no long able to open Photoshop. The applications icon has been replaced with another application's document icon! Specifically, Photoshop's application icon has been replaced by a MacHacha document icon, and "Get Info" claims that it is a MacHacha file. The version line still identifies it as Version 7.0.1, it is a 53 MB file, and I *know* it is Adobe Photoshop. It is a legal copy, and I am the owner. It just seems like Tiger has replaced the icon. And of course, it's not recognized as an application, so I can't run Photoshop, and I desperately need to!

I've read the instructions in this thread and have tried deleting the icons files as prescribed. No change. I've tried to do what it says in this thread: but can't find any files with those names. I've searched Apple's support forums, but can't find anything helpful there either. I have logged out and logged back in again, and have restarted. The only obvious thing I haven't done is try to reinstall Photoshop, which I guess I'll try to do when I get home, unless somebody else can point me towards a slightly less painful solution.

Many thanks. Rock on.

What's a good printer for OSX Tiger?

alteredcarbon — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:26:33 -0800

Can you recommend a good printer that runs on well on OS X Tiger? I just upgraded my dual G4 to Tiger and now I am having issues (not working) with my old printer (epson stylus photo 750). Epson hasn't made any new drivers for it and I am doubting they will. Also apple gimp-print driver doesn't work for it either. I've been thinking of getting a new printer anyways, so any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks for your time and help.

OS X Apache Location?

missed — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 13:13:11 -0800

Where does OS X Tiger actually store the apache directory? I want to change the access file but I can't seem to find it. Spotlight doesn't reveal the file. A related question: grep doesn't work in OS X's terminal??? I feel silly :(