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Unfortunately, MacOS at release Sierra has gone the same funny route that Microsoft did such that you will have bloatware forced onto your machine - it's free, so you'll be made to feel guilty enough to be data mined in return. Siri, the speech-to-text assistant, will launch and stay in the background eating your CPU cycles (and do hell knows what else given Apple's reputation). Not only did you not ask for it, but why the frack cannot you just fracking remove it?
Siri cannnot be removed (go figure, why the frack not?) so you can only disable it - at least it will not run in the background. In order to do so, you need to disable system integrity protection and then edit /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Siri.plist
to change:
<key>Disabled</key> <true/>
to:
<key>Disabled</key> <true/>
You can then save the file, reboot and, if you want, turn system integrity protection back on.
In order to hide an user from the log-in screen and other areas, issue as root:
dscl . create /Users/flot IsHidden 1
where /Users/flot
is the path to an user directory.
To revert the change, issue:
dscl . create /Users/flot IsHidden 0
In cases where you have a bluetooth keyboard that is not original and no USB keyboard available, issue the following command as root
on MacOS in order to set a flag that will flush PRAM:
nvram -c
and then restart the computer.
The following command:
spctl --master-disable
will just enable the Anywhere
option in the Gatekeeper control panel.
Issue as root:
scutil --set HostName HOSTNAME
where:
HOSTNAME
is the hostname or FQDN hostname to set the machine to.defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false
On a Mac keyboard without a Del, to send the key combination to Windows, use the alternative Fn+Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.
Images being mounted by MacOS are first verified before becoming available. To skip this procedure, issue as root:
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify YES
To revert the behaviour, issue as root:
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify NO
Ever so often, for downloaded application, OSX performs an extra verification step when they are launched. This behaviour can stall the startup proceedure when the Mac boots up. To disable quarantine verification of programs, issue as root:
defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
and to revert to quarantine verification, issue as root:
defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool YES
Using only the MacOS interface, MacOS can be setup to be a gateway and masquerade traffic for a wireless machine by turning on Internet Sharing
from System Settings→Sharing
. Unfortunately, a machine has to connect to the MacOS access point and OSX cannot be setup to just pass network traffic between interfaces using only the graphical interface.
One example where the former is relevant, is the case where a Raspberry Pi is setup as a wireless access point and MacOS connects to the Pi. In case Intenet Sharing
is turned on, MacOS severs the connection to the Raspberry Pi access point and converts its own wireless interface into an access point.
To convince MacOS to masquerade traffic, edit or create /etc/forwarding
and append a line:
nat on EXTERNAL_INTERFACE from CONNECTED_NETWORK to any -> (EXTERNAL_INTERFACE)
where:
EXTERNAL_INTERFACE
is the MacOS external interface (ifconfig
will list all interfaces such that the interface that passes Internet traffic can be chosen, for instance, en0
).CONNECTED_NETWORK
is the network for which packets will be forwarded, for instance, 192.168.4.0/24
Followed by:
pfctl -d
to disable the firewall, and:
pfctl -F all
to flush all existing rules.
After that, the firewall can be restarted by loading the rules from /etc/forwarding
:
pfctl -f /private/etc/nat-rules -e
The last step is to use sysctl
to enable forwarding:
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
MacOS may get stuck whilst booting; when holding the Cmd+V during boot, the message may show and OpenDirectory crash complaining about "too many corpses". To fix the issue, reboot in recovery mode, mount the disk if needed and then open up a Terminal.
Issue:
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/caches/opendirectory
followed by:
mv ./mbr_cache ./mbr_cache-old
and then reboot.
System Preferences…
from the Apple menu,Add Other Account…
,CalDAV account
,Account Type
to Advanced
,Server Address
enter www.google.com
,Server Path
to /calendar/dav/username@googlemail.com/user
and substitute username@googlemail.com
for your Google account E-Mail address,Use SSL
and set the port to 443
.
In case SystemUIServer
spools the CPU up when clicking the wifi icon in the toolbar or opening Network Preferences opens an empty window then delete the contents of /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
and reboot.
Issue as root:
nvram target-mode=1
followed by:
reboot
to reboot a Mac in target disk mode.