Anand Pandit's Blog

The OS X boot arguments are useful for troubleshooting problems with system startup and how the system behaves when running. sudo nvram boot-args="-v" :  This command will set the system to always boot to verbose mode, so we do not need to hold Command + V at system startup. sudo nvram boot-args="-x" :  This will set the system to always boot into Safe Mode. sudo nvram boot-args="-s" :  This command will boot the system into single user mode without needing to hold Command-S at system startup. sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"  :   when you close the display but connect the system to an external monitor and keyboard the system will stay awake. After running this command, when connecting an external monitor, the internal display will be disabled, which can be beneficial in some situations such as those where you are mirroring your desktop but wish to run the external display at a higher resolution than your laptop can run. sudo nvram b...

macOS SIP supports a set of hidden options to disable few sections of SIP by passing hidden options to csrutil tool.   Each of these can be selectively disabled by running one of the following commands while booted into Recovery mode: csrutil enable --no-internal csrutil enable --without kext csrutil  enable  --without fs csrutil  enable  --without debug csrutil  enable  --without dtrace csrutil  enable  --without nvram You can disable two or more components by structuring the command as follows: csrutil enable --without kext  --without debug How to disable /enable to SIP , refer to  http://anandmpandit.blogspot.in/2015/11/how-to-disable-system-integrity.html .  Note : These options are tested on macOS ElCapitan , on higher version of macOS some or all of them may not work.

Code signing is a macOS security technology that you use to certify that an app was created by you. Once an app is signed, the system can detect any change to the app—whether the change is introduced accidentally or by malicious code. As Apple Developer site says ( click here for more details  on code signing) : code signing allows the operating system to: Ensure that a piece of code has not been altered since it was signed.  The system can detect even the smallest change, whether it was intentional (by a malicious attacker, for example) or accidental (as when a file gets corrupted). When a code signature is intact, the system can be sure the code is as the signer intended. Identify code as coming from a specific source (a developer or signer).  The code signature includes cryptographic information that unambiguously points to a particular author. Determine whether code is trustworthy for a specific purpose.  Among other things, a developer can use a ...

We might wonder how to disable the USB ports on Mac to prevent data copy to external USB mass storage devices. The USB kext on os x is loaded at the time of start of the system, this can be loaded / unloaded using kextload or kextunload command. To disable USB port on Mac , follow below steps: On Macs running  Mountain Lion, Mavericks  and Yosemite : Unmount any connected USB devices to the system by running below command                  $ diskutil unmount /Volumes/USBDISK. Now unload the USB related kernel extensions in the following order using kextunload command.             sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCardReader             sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBODD             sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.IOUSBMassStorageClass        This wil...

There might be a time where you want decrypt the FileVault encrypted mac, but you are facing issues in logging into Mac to perform decryption using system preferences. In such cases the following steps will help you in decrypting the disk using Recovery HD. Reboot the Mac, Go to recovery HD partition of the system. ( To start your computer from Recovery, restart your Mac and hold down the Command and R keys at startup.) Open Terminal application from Utilities -> Application.  First will need to identify the Logical Volume UUID of the encrypted drive using the  diskutil corestorage list  command:           diskutil corestorage list         4.   Once you have the UUID of the logical volume as shown in above picture, you can then either             unlock or decrypt the encrypted volume using the following commands.       a) Using ...

System Integrity Protection  or Rootless mode is a security feature of OS X El Capitan operating system  by Apple Inc. It protects certain system processes, file and folders from being modified or tampered with by other processes even when executed by the root user or by a user with root privileges(sudo). Following are the  the key concepts of System Integrity Protection. 1. System Locations Cannot Be Written To  -  System files can be modified only by system processes signed with Apple’s code signing identity. App processes should instead write to locations designated for third-party developers. The following directories can only be written to by the system:  System-Only Locations      ● /bin      ● /sbin      ● /usr      ● /System  In contrast, the following directories are available to any process:  Locations Available to Developers    ...

It very easy to change the font style in outlook for Mac 2016 on OS X. Follow below steps to change the default font. Open "Outlook"  application on Mac. Open Preferences of Outlook       3. Click on Fonts to change the default font settings for the outlook.            4. Select the desired font to set as default font.      5. Close the preferences window.      6. Click on New Email, Now your default font would set to the newly configured font style.

Tab completion in Linux is a very useful feature. On OS X the tab completion can be enabled as well. The tab completion can be enabled on OS X by adding few lines to .inputrc file. Method: Open Terminal.app Go to your home directory such as  /Users/user. Open vim to create .inputrc file in home directory by running following command. vim .inputrc Add following lines to the file set completion-ignore-case on set show-all-if-ambiguous on TAB: menu-complete Save the file using "esc + :wq" in vim. Now open another tab to see the changes to tab completion in bash shell.