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I’ve just downloaded and installed the latest update for OS X via the Software Update utility. The update requires a system restart which isn’t unexpected. What was unexpected was the second restart in the middle of the reboot sequence.

After my heart resumed something approaching its’ normal rate I did what I should have done in the first place and read the update documentation. If I’d done this I should have spotted the key phrase:

With the Mac OS X 10.4.6 system software update, PowerPC-based Macs will restart twice, instead of once, after the initial installation.

No explanation as to why this was neccessary though.

This was also spotted, with similar cardiac effects, by todays edition of The Register.

Downloadable from here.

RTFM. Really.

Although this is free advertising, before you use SSH for anything other than a drop in replacement for telnet buy a copy of O’Reilly’s SSH: The Definitive Guide, and then read it. It’s a rare O’Reilly book which doesn’t make you realise just how little you actually know about a subject and this one is no exception. To be honest, it was only after reading this book that I realised just why I shouldn’t use SSH as a drop in replacement for telnet, which in turn proved how little I knew about SSH. Which kind of proves my point I guess.

Neat Hacks

To populate a remote accounts’s authorized_keys with a public key from your local machine, in a single command try:

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh \
user@remote.host 'cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'

One gotcha is that you do need to have password authentication enabled (PasswordAuthentication yes) in your /etc/ssh/sshd_config for this to work.

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When I’m working on a Windows machine I like to keep Task Manager running minimised in my task bar so I’ve got immediate visual feedback on how hard my system’s working. That way, when I think my system’s not running as fast as it should be I can immediately see if the system’s maxed out at 100% CPU usage.

When this happens, which is a fairly common occurence, Task Manager’s Processes tab will normally point a finger at the culprit process, which is all well and good if I see a process like firefox.exe soaking up all the resources it can but if the process name isn’t as intuitive how can you tell if this process needs to be killed or restarted?

Whilst a Google search is always worthwhile, a combination of What Process? and Greatis’ Startup Programs Database have proved indispensible in the past. Whilst What Process? can be as apocryphal as the Wikipedia the combination of the two sites have yet to fail me.

As a nice side effect, checking all of your running processes against the Startup Programs Database can dramatically increase the startup speed of your Windows machine. For example, if you’ve got a version of Java installed, then you’ve probably got a copy of jusched.exe running to check for updates; if you’d prefer to check manually then this process can be prevented from starting at boot time without any problem.

Consider the following scenario for a moment; you have a home network, hooked up to a broadband connection. You’ve done your homework and have a firewall with little or no inbound access. You’re like thousands of other people and have a Windows PC running XP Home or XP Professional. You’d like to be able to get at your Windows PC when you’re at work but you don’t want to let all of those script kiddies at your network, and besides you’ve heard bad things about letting a Windows PC loose on the internet.

Enter the swiss army knife of the network; SSH. That’s the Secure SHell, not a polite request to shut up. Here’s what to do …

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