Archive for November, 2010

Command line Mac OS X printer install

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Here’s a way to add a dgp http printer to mac os (and configure it to deal with the abort-job policy problem):

lpadmin -p ‘MomonWood’ -E -o name=’MomonWood’ -v ‘http://wood.dgp.toronto.edu/printers/Mom_on_Wood/.printer’ -P ‘/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/HP LaserJet 2430.gz’ -o printer-error-policy=”abort-job”

Resetting password on Mac OS X 10.5 (without the cd)

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

I recently received a macbook which I didn’t have an account on, so I found the following instructions for resetting the password (from

http://www.macyourself.com/2009/08/03/how-to-reset-your-mac-os-x-password-without-an-installer-disc/ )

Reset 10.5 Leopard password

  1. Power on or restart your Mac.
  2. At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
  3. This step is optional, but it’s a good idea because it checks the consistency of the hard disk before moving on. At the prompt, type fsck -fy and press Enter/Return. Wait for the checks to complete before going to the next step.
  4. Type mount -uw / and press Enter.
  5. Type launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist and press Enter.
  6. Type ls /Users and press Enter. This lists all of the usernames on the computer – helpful if you don’t know or remember what these are.
  7. Type dscl . -passwd /Users/username password and replace “username” with one of the users displayed in the previous step. Replace “password” with a new password of your choice. Press Enter.
  8. Type reboot and press Enter.

Windows Update Catalog

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Microsoft maintains a website with a catalog of all the device drivers, software update and hotfixes you get through windows update or the add/remove device wizard on windows.  It’s intended for corporate deployments of these packages.  The website is here:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com