Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with panther

Filezilla for Panther for an idiot Mac User?

biddeford — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:59:38 -0800

I need to download Filezilla this afternoon for a freelance job, but I'm using a creaky old Mac with OS 10.3.9. All the download versions I'm finding require system 10.5. I'm starting to panic. Help! Please!

Damn cats again

Skyanth — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:05:33 -0800

Please help me settle a discussion with my boyfriend: he says that panthers are always leopards. In Wikipedia I have read that the word "panther" can mean several kinds of big cats: "In North America, "panther" is used most often to refer the Florida panther sub-population. In South America, "panther" refers to both the spotted and black color morphs of the jaguar, while it is also broadly used to refer to the Old World leopard."

... in the cougar entry, or:

"A panther can be any of several species of large felid; in North America, the term refers to cougars, in South America, jaguars, and elsewhere, leopards. Early naturalists distinguished between leopards and panthers not by colour (a common misconception), but by the length of the tail—panthers having longer tails than leopards."

... in the leopard entry.

I can't find any real world references however -- by which I mean: books. I won't have a discussion where Wikipedia is my only source because that's just very, very lame, so it's either admitting he is right (and he might well be) or finding books that back up the Wikipedia articles. I don't have the time to go to the library and look it up in the next few days, so I was hoping you could give me some references.

And yes, I solemnly promise never to start discussions based on what I have read in Wikipedia ever again.

It's in my head and I can't get it out!

viama — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:35:31 -0800

What is the name of the music that accompanied the Pink Panther cartoon series? I'm aware that the main theme was by Henry Mancini, but I'm after the music that was in the background during the cartoon itself. The music fequently synched up with the action onscreen. I have found the credited composers for the Fritz Freleng cartoons, but my google-fu is failing me for a title.

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.)

Dual OSes on Mac... help!

dobbs — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 23:32:26 -0800

Complicated/complex (to me) OS X Tiger printer problem inside. I have a friend who has a very expensive color printer that won't work with Tiger (he found out after upgrading from Panther). He's spoken to Epson and Apple and they both say it's not supported and won't work. He checked around on the Apple forums and found many people with the same issues. GIMP and other things haven't solved the problem.

He now has to downgrade to Panther as he uses the printer to make proofs for his design clients.

I'm wondering if it's possible for him to buy an inexpensive drive and install Panther on it--then, still create on Tiger where everything he needs is and then just email himself the file and reboot into the other drive when he has to print. (Or maybe he can boot to the external and see the internal as a secondary drive?)

Is this possible? If so, how is it done?

I just had dinner with him and explained it thusly (we're both OS X newbies). Please clarify as best you can where I went wrong:

He has a dual powermac g5.

-- he should buy a small drive (say, 20 gigs or something) -- any kind of regular internal drive should do but he should check his g5 manual.

-- install the drive in the g5 and install panther on it choosing "erase and install".

-- then, when he boots he'll be asked which OS he wants to boot into (tiger or panther).

-- choose tiger, do you work that you need done.

-- reboot into panther and print.

Is this all correct?

His questions, which I couldn't verify:

-- will the system ask which drive he wants to boot to or does he have to do something ahead of booting (holding down a key or what) to tell it how to boot?

-- does he just have to install panther and his printer software and nothing else? ie, if he creates something in quark on tiger, will he be able to run quark from the tiger drive when he's in panther and print? or does he need to reinstall quark and any other apps on the panther drive?

-- will any normal internal drive do? it doesn't have to be mac specific, right?

What other issues should he consider? He wants to buy the drive asap as he really needs to print.

Assuming his research is correct and the printer will not work from Tiger is the best solution or can you offer something better?

MySQL

mecran01 — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 09:29:45 -0800

mysqlfilter: I'm in the midst of installing phpwiki on OS X panther and, because I am following the steps drone-like and have no idea what I am doing. . . ... I get to the part where I change directories to within PHPWiki, a folder called "schemas" and the Macdev Gods beckon me to:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p[password you just set in mysql] wiki [there is a greater than sign here] mysql.sql

I understand that I'm using mysqladmin to create a database called wiki, I think, and that something is getting piped into mysql.sql. Possibly.

When I type the command, however, I keep getting this error:

mysql.sql: No such file or directory

There's not a file called "mysql.sql" in this directory. If I slap one in there from another app, I get the same error. So my question is:

1. what obvious mistake am I making?
(I am using the correct password, and can create databases in the same directory with other names)

2. What exactly am I doing here, so I can look up the answer in the docs?

Thank you for your patience.

IE5 -> Panther

silusGROK — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:06:17 -0800

So. I've finally upgraded from OS9x, and I'm now using Panther... but I have no idea how to migrate my IE5 bookmarks, my Eudora e-mail and contact stuff, or my Palm contacts, calendar, memos, and the like. I know items like this have been asked, but I've not had any luck with Google.

Can I set up superusers and limited rights accounts in OSX

spartacusroosevelt — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 12:46:19 -0800

I have a dozen iMacs that I just upgraded to Panther. I want to set up the superuser account and then a limited rights login that can run only specific programs etc. I find all the configuration stuff nice and easy, but a fairly long process. In OS9 I couple copy the multiuser settings to CD and drag and drog the settings in the system folder. I can do a similar thing in OSX, can't I? If so, how?

Panther Reinstall woes

dame — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 18:28:49 -0800

Desperate Mac question: My iBook won't let me erase & reinstall Panther because computer is now running 10.3.3. [mi] The computer came loaded with 10.2.4. I once did an archive and reinstall with that and then upgraded to Panther (10.3) with the disks. I have the disks for those two OSes. I later upgraded to 10.3.3. The nice man at Tekserve told me my computer is horribly ill and that I have to erase and install. That's fine—everything is backed up and ready. Now, when I run the installer, it refuses to let me erase & install because I am "running a newer version." I fail to see why this matters, as I want to erase it anyway.

Basically, I've been trying to fix this problem for weeks (not installing, but the computer dementia). I have looked on the mac forums. I am losing it. So if anyone knows the way to fix this, I will be enternally grateful. Some day, I may even get my mind back.

Packaging the perl, give it to atom, all on Panther

mmangano — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 23:15:30 -0800

I'm trying to write a short Perl script under Mac OS X (Panther) to post to a Moveable Type weblog using the Atom API. After some initial problems with installing packages, I'm having this issue. [more inside] I get the following error: Can't locate XML/LibXML.pm in @INC. Any pointers from you Mac/Perl gurus?

(LibXML.pm is located under: /Users/,username/.cpan/build/XML-LibXML-1.56)

Upgrading to OSX 10.3

timeistight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 03:16:46 -0800

What's the best procedure for upgrading to Panther (OS X 10.3) on a machine that's already been upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2? "Archive and Install" sounds like the best compromise between cleanliness and laziness – any problems to watch out for?

Any suggestions for good "serial terminal" programs for OS X 10.3?

mrbill — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:02:44 -0800

I finally picked up a USB-to-serial adapter for my Mac so that I can use the machine as a serial console on my various SPARC boxes and Cisco equipment. After installing the latest drivers (the IOGear stuff is actually made by ATEN), I've now got a /dev/tty.usbserial0 device. Using ZTerm, I can talk to my Cisco router, but ZTerm smells/looks very badly like a ported MacOS 9 product. I can't get Taylor UUCP to compile under Panther (10.3) correctly in order to have tip or cu, like I use on my Sun boxes.

Any suggestions for good "serial terminal" programs for OS X 10.3? I've already checked VersionTracker, Google, and all the regular suspect places.

MSIE for Mac 5.2.3 Not Saving Preferences/Cookies on Mac OS X 10.3.2

anathema — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:09:20 -0800

Cookie and preference problem with IE 5.2.3 running Panther (10.3.2)...[more inside] Clamshell iBook DVD Special Edition. 466 MHz, 320 MB RAM. I normally use Safari and Firebird but I'm sometimes forced to jump to IE for certain things. After one of the Jaguar updates I noticed that IE was not saving preferences or cookies after I would quit the app. Sometimes it seems like some cookies are actually expiring during the session. This problem has carried over into my clean install of Panther. I don't run any extremely hincky apps and I've tried reinstalling IE and also trashing .plist files. No luck. Any suggestions?

Has anyone installed MySQL from Server Logistics? Any other suggestions?

btwillig — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 13:55:28 -0800

I'm new to Mac OS X's command line and a little nervous about using it to install Mysql. After doing some research on the net I found what might be an alternative: installing Apache2, PHP4 and Mysql from Server Logistics . The post claims that by also installing one of the Barebones text editors and Tinkertool I could avoid having to use the command line altogether. It was also suggested that the Server Logistics Complete Packages are more powerful versions of Apache and Php than apple ships (I'm on Panther). Has anyone done an install this way? Any other suggestions? Should I just get over it and use the damn command line?

Reinstalling OS9 safely on a Powerbook?

capndesign — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:20:03 -0800

About a month ago I installed Panther on my Powerbook. I did a clean install, so Classic (OS 9) was wiped from the machine. When I went to reinstall it, from the OS9 book disc, I was warned that it would also be doing a clean install, which made me nervous. So, how do I reinstall OS 9 onto my Powerbook without effecting everything that's on there right now?