Creating a bootable 1GB Flash drive

How would you like to have a 1GB keychain drive that can boot from your Mac, running the utilities of your choice? I'm talking about those flash drives that are small enough to easily slip into your pocket. Yes, it can be done. Even better, the software for this setup is completely free! All you need is the flash drive itself and a Mac OS X Install disc that works with your Mac (such as the one that came with your Mac).

To read the full article, click here.

For more on this subject, see also my two MacFixIt columns on bootable discs and drives (Part 1 and Part 2) as well as the references for Chapter 3 listed below.

From Mac OS X Help Line: Panther Edition:

Classic Environment chapter. At several points in Mac OS X Help Line: Tiger Edition, I state that the Classic Environment chapter from the Panther Edition is posted online. Here is where it is.

I made it available because, due to space constraints as well as the declining importance of Classic, there is no Classic chapter in the Tiger Edition.

To download a PDF file of the Classic Environment chapter, click here.

Corrections, clarifications, and changes

This section contains a list of changes and corrections to Mac OS X Help Line: Tiger Edition. You'll find two types of items here:

• At almost 1200 pages, it is just about inevitable that there will be some minor errors in the text. There may also be instances where, while not exactly an error, the text could have been a bit clearer. As I find them, all such errors and clarifications will be posted to this list.
  
  
• As Apple releases updates to Mac OS X and related software -- and publishes new technical documents covering various facets of Mac OS X -- some statements in the book that were correct and complete when written will require modification to remain correct and complete. Major changes will have to wait for the next edition of the book. But in cases where a brief revision will address the issue, I will cite the new information here.

This list is a work in progress. It will continue to be updated as qualifying items are found. If you own the book, and spot something that you believe should be listed here, please let me know.

Chapter 1

Page 10: Intel Macs. Apple has now released new Macs with Intel processors. Here are some key troubleshooting points about the new Macs that you should know:

• As stated on page 10, Classic is gone on Intel Macs. There is no Apple-supported way to run Classic anymore.

• As stated on page 10, Open Firmware is gone on Intel Macs. It is replaced by something called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). This means that holding down the Command-Option-O-F keys at startup, which brings up the Open Firmware command line interface in PowerPC Macs, does nothing on Intel Macs. Unfortunately, Apple has not yet provided any user interface to the EFI, nor any guidelines as to what commands to use to accomplish what Open Firmware previously did.

However, the Open Firmware Password utility, as found on Mac OS X Install discs, still is present and still works (presumably through EFI).

See Chapter 5, pages 370-372 for related background.

• To make a hard drive bootable on an Intel Mac, it will likely need to be reformatted via Disk Utility's Partition tab. To do so, click the Options button and select the GUID Partition Scheme. This scheme is required for Intel Macs and will not work for booting from a PPC Mac.

You will also need to install an Intel build of Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later (as, at least for now, there are separate Intel and PPC builds of Mac OS X).

Technically Speaking: A drive formatted with an Apple Partition Scheme (APS) can boot from an Intel Mac. The problem is that the Mac OS X Install discs for Intel versions of Mac OS X will refuse to install Mac OS X on such drives. They only install on GUID-partitioned drives (Apple has not yet explained why they have made this restriction). However, if you install an Intel version of Mac OS X on an APS drive via some other mechnism (such as by using the Restore option in Disk Utility, or via some other backup utility), it will boot. Thus, you could create a dual-boot drive by creating two partitions on an APS-formatted drive, and installing a PPC version of Mac OS X on one partition and an Intel version on the other.

• Intel Macs can boot from USB drives.

• As stated on Page 10, programs will have to be updated to run in Intel native mode on Intel Macs. Older programs can still run in PowerPC mode, via an emulator called Rosetta. However, they will run slower than they would in native mode. They also will typically be significantly larger in size.

Some programs may not run even in Rosetta. See this Apple document for details.

• You can tell whether a program is a PowerPC program, an Intel program, or a Universal program (which contains the code to run on both platforms) by: launching System Profiler, accessing the Applications list, and looking in the Kind column. The same info is also available in the Get Info window of each application.

Activity Monitor will show whether a currently open Universal program is running in Intel or PowerPC mode.

• Plug-ins that are PowerPC-based will not run within a program running in Intel mode. Safari is an example of an application where you may have this problem. The solution (to get the plug-ins to work) is to force the application to "Open using Rosetta" via a checkbox in application's Get Info window. See Apple documents 303059 and 303120 for more details.

• See this Apple document for a summary of all startup key combinations for Intel-Based Macs. In particular: Target Disk Mode (T) still works on Intel-based Macs; Command-D is used to get an Install DVD to start up from Apple Hardware Test (as covered more in this Apple document).

• For more details, check out the two article I wrote on the subject, one for The Mac Observer, the other for MacFixIt.

Page 10: Booting Windows XP from an Intel Mac. Apple has released Boot Camp, new software that allows Intel Macs to boot Windows XP. See this MacFixIt article for more background. Alternatively, Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to run Windows on an Intel Mac in an emulation environmment, similar to how Virtual PC works on Power Macs.

Note: You can only install Boot Camp on a drive with one partition at the time of installation. If you have two or more partitions, you will likely need to erase your drive and start over with one partition before you can use Boot Camp.

Chapter 2

Page 83: Parental Controls. To clarify: An administrative account is listed in the Accounts System Preferences pane as an Admin account. A "normal" user is listed as a Standard user. If you modify a Standard account via Parental Controls, the account is listed as Managed.

To turn on Parental Controls for a given application, simply enable its checkbox in the Parental Controls tab. To further customize the level of control, click the application's Configure button. For example, for the Finder, click the Configure button next to the Finder & System item. From here, you can choose between, for example, "Some Limits" and "Simple Finder."

Chapter 3

Page 135: Partitioning without erasing. Starting around 10.4.6, Apple introduced a new Unix command, as part of the diskutil command: diskutil resizeVolume. It is used to create a new partition without erasing the existing one. It is accessed by Boot Camp to create the needed partition for Windows. The pdisk command is still around but should not be used on Intel Macs.

Page 199: Making a duplicate bootable CD/DVD. To clarify and correct Step 6, I would only use the "DVD/CD master" format for creating a bootable disc, not the "read-only" or "compressed" ones.

You can use the "read/write" format initially, if you intend to modify the image. I would then unmount the image and use the Convert command (in the Images menu) to convert it to a "DVD/CD master" format before selecting to burn the image. However, this is probably not required. I have burned a read/write image of a bootable disc and it worked just fine.

Page 202: Alternatives to BootCD

It's looking now like BootCD may never be updated for Tiger. But don't despair. A useful alternative is Clone X. It's latest versions sport a feature to make a bootable CD from the System files on your hard drive. When doing so, an application launcher is placed on the CD. You add applications to the launcher prior to burning the disc. These applications are then accessible when you boot from the CD. There is no true Finder access however.

Another alternative is to find a bootable disc that includes a rc.launchapp file in its /etc folder (Apple's Mac OS X Install discs do not have this file!). Create a read/write image of the disc. Open the file in TextEdit (copying it to your hard drive first if needed). Locate the line where it lists the the absolute path of the application that opens when the CD boots. Replace it with whatever application you want to boot. Put that application at that location on the disc image. Now burn the disc. The disc should now boot with your selected application.

In general, such discs will either be bootable only on PowerPC Macs or only on Intel Macs. However, there are now some dual-boot CDs and DVDs out there (such as the one for Prosoft's Drive Genius). If you use such a disc as the basis of your custom disc, it should be dual bootable as well. [See also the notes for Chapter 1 for more on dual-booting.]

Chapter 4

Page 266-267: Summary Info windows. You can access the Multiple Item (Summary) Info window, even when selecting less than 11 items, by holding down the Control key when selecting Get Info from the Finder's File menu.

Pages 308-318: Preferences files. See my Preferences Files tutorials on MacFixIt for another view on this subject, with some additional material.

Chapter 5

Pages 366-367: POST test on Intel iMacs. The Intel iMacs have some new ways of using lights and tones to indicate problems at startup. See this Apple article for details.

Page 375: boot.efi instead of BootX. For Intel Macs, a boot.efi file, similarly located in the CoreServices folder, is accessed at startup instead of BootX.

Page 385: Launchd files. If you want to create your own launchd configuration files, I highly recommend a third-party utility called Lingon. It makes the process a whole lot easier.

Pages 395-396: Logging in as Console. A persistent bug in Tiger prevents this for working. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.

Pages 428-430: New Settings dialog. The dialog shown in Figure 5.19 has changed. Rather than Yes and No buttons, the buttons now read: "Use new settings" and "Use original settings."

Pages 465-466: Disk repairs and "live verification." With Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later, using "live verification, if you get an "incorrect size for file temp" error message, it can typically be ignored. In some cases, an "underlying task reported failure" message can also be ignored. To be safe, however, you should run fsck in single-user mode. See also this article.

Pages 477-478. The fsck_hfs command. See this Apple article for more details on using fsck_hfs in Terminal, including the recommendation to use the -l option. The article also covers doing a live verification via the diskutil verify / command in Terminal.

Chapter 6

Page 545: Modifying rights. Actually, you do not have to relaunch the Finder or log out for the change to take effect. It takes effect immediately.

Page 603: .GlobalPreferences.plist. Here's a bit more information on what this file does:

As stated in the man file for the defaults command, as accessed from Terminal: "Though all applications, system services, and other programs have their own domains, they also share a domain named NSGlobalDomain. If a default isn't specified in the application's domain, but is specified in NSGlobalDomain, then the application uses the value in that domain." The GlobalDomain settings are stored in the .GlobalPreferences.plist file.

This means, for example, if an application does not specify a default font size of its documents, Mac OS X will use the default font size specified in the GlobalDomain, assuming they are listed there.

Note: The man listing for defaults also describes how to modify these settings from the defaults command in Terminal.

Page 614: Performance Monitors. If Activity Monitor notes an application taking up an unusually high percentage of CPU time (a listing of greater than 100% is even possible!), and you are having slow downs as a result, something has gone wrong. You should Force Quit the application.

Chapter 9

Page 883: Viruses. A virus/worm/Trojan Horse for the Mac was discovered in February 2006. Called the Leap-A (or Oompa) virus, it essentially works as follows: The infected file arrives via email or iChat as a file called latestpictures.tgz. When you attempt to open it, it creates files in the /tmp folder - which eventually leads to a file (called apphook.bundle) added to an InputManagers folder, typically the one in the ~/Library folder. From here, the virus can propagate itself to any Cocoa application that supports Input Managers. It also tries to spread itself to other users by mailing a copy of itself to all those on your Bonjour iChat list.

Anti-virus software can detect and eradicate this. A more general protective mechanism is to prevent files from being added undetected to the InputManagers folder. One way to do this is to change the ownership of the folder to root; you will need to temporarily undo this if you want to add a legitimate file to this folder.

Pages 895-897: Safari vulnerability. A new security exploit in Safari was described in February 2006. Understanding how it works also sheds light on some aspects of how documents open, as covered in these Chapter 9 pages, as well as in Chapter 4 (pages 274-284) and Chapter 6 (pages 508-514). Also check out Chapter 9 (page 951) for more on metadata and where extended attributes are stored.

Recall the discussions (in Chapter 4 and Chapter 6) of different ways that determine which application gets launched when you double-click a document. Here is a summary with some new details: First, there are the default bindings (type, creator, extension), all part of the Uniform Type Identifiers, with pairings stored in each application's Info.plist file and eventually in Mac OS X's LaunchServices database in the /Library/Caches folder.

Second, if you select a different application to launch with a document and click Change All in the Open With section of the document's Get Info window, this change is mapped in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist file. This overrides the default choice.

Finally, if you make a change using Open With for just the one specific document, that change is stored in the resource fork of the document itself. A resource of type usro is created. This specification overrides the preceding two, when deciding what application to use.

By the way, you can "see" these usro resources via utilities such as HexEdit or Rezilla.

The "danger" in all of this is with the usro resource. Specifically, the resource addition is transferred with the document, even if it is downloaded from the Web. This means, for example, that you could disguise a Terminal script as a jpeg file, but use "Open With" to force it to open in Terminal anyway. The result is that, when the user double-clicks the supposed jpeg document, it opens Terminal and runs the script. Oddly, to work as planned, the script has to omit the traditional first "shebang" line (such as !# /bin/sh) of the script. Otherwise, Safari correctly flags this as an "unsafe" executable file, alerting you to the fact that it is not the jpeg it appears to be.

There are various things you can do to guard against such exploits. One is to turn off the option in Safari's Preferences to "Open safe files after downloading" – although the file will still download and could be opened later "manually." Even more secure would be to use a utility such as Saft Lite or Paranoid Android. The latter program will detect if a usro resource is present and remove it if possible (warning you of the danger if it cannot remove it).

As of March 2006, both this vulnerability (and the Leap-A virus) have been plugged by Apple via Security Update 2006-001.

Chapter 11

Pages 1013-1014: iLife '06. As predicted in this sidebar, iLife '06 was released shortly after Help Line went to press. The version of iTunes remained at version 6, but everything else was substantially updated. Here are the highlights:

• iWeb: This is an entirely new application. It allows you to create a Web site with almost no effort and post it to your .Mac account (or anywhere else). You can feed in media from other iLife applications (such as iPhoto or iMovie) to add to your site.

• GarageBand: This application received an almost complete overhaul. Two of its biggest additions are (a) the ability to create podcasts via a host of direct podcast features not found in the previous version and (b) the ability to add soundtracks to iMovies. See this page for more details.

• iPhoto: This app has many new features as well, including a new "photocasting" feature for sharing your iPhoto library over a network, as well as the ability to create calendars and greeting cards.

• iMovie HD and iDVD: These received less extensive updates. Of note, iDVD now works with any DVD burner, not just Apple's SuperDrive.

Pages 1013-1014: Converting video to play on a video iPod. Converting video to be playable on an iPod keeps getting easier. In addition to what is covered on page 1013, here are some more alternatives:

• iTunes 6.0.2 or later can convert most movies that are playable in iTunes to an iPod-compatible format. To do so, select the movie file; then select "Convert Selection for iPod" from iTunes' Advanced menu. See also this Apple article.

• The freeware utility HandBrake can directly convert the contents of a DVD to an iPod format.

• The freeware utility iSquint can convert almost any movie file on your Mac to an iPod format, and do it faster than with Apple's software. It does not require the QuickTime Pro or DivX codecs.

• If you have EyeTV, it now inclues an option to convert saved programs to iPod format.

If you are still using a utility that requires that you select your own conversion settings, be aware of the following: The video iPod supports two types of video: MPEG-4 and H.264 (which is the default format for iPod). The problem is that there are several variations of these formats, and not all of them work with the iPod. Actually, H.264 is itself a variation of the MPEG-4 standard (called MPEG-4 Part 10). One potential road to trouble is that, with the H.264 format, profiles can be 'main' or 'baseline.' Only the baseline profile works with iPods. There is no way of telling by looking at a video file (or even its Get Info window) in the Finder whether it's the 'right' type for an iPod or not. All types are simply identified as MPEG-4 files.

Revised: October 12, 2006

For corrections etc. for Panther Edition, click here.