Linked: How to Ensure Ethernet Connects Before AirPort on Your Mac

Some time ago I found this great blog-post about how to prioritize the Ethernet connection over Wi-Fi. In my case this is when I’m at home.

Sometimes, your Mac will connect to a janky Wi-Fi network. The connection is slow or you’re on the other side of a lead wall and you’re getting a really poor signal. When you finally find an Ethernet jack to plug into, you may notice you’re still connected to the Wi-Fi network that was giving you problems. This is because your Network Service Order list is out of its proper order to allow the Ethernet to take over when plugged in. Don’t fret, we’ll show you how to reset the Service Order list on your Mac to ensure that Ethernet takes priority over AirPort.

Read the full post at maclife.com

SMARTReporter

A couple of months ago I found this litte app that checks all the disks on my Mac for any errors.

SMARTReporter is a free application for Mac OS X that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard disk drive. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology built into most modern hard disk drives that acts as an “early warning system” for pending hard disk drive problems. SMARTReporter can notify you of impending hard disk drive failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application. The current status of your hard disk drives is always displayed through the customizable menu item.
Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drives, if you want S.M.A.R.T. support for your SCSI or FireWire hard disk drive, send feedback to Apple.
Please note that a S.M.A.R.T. alert doesn’t mean that your HDD will completely fail for sure, nor can S.M.A.R.T. catch all possible HDD errors – it’s just a very valuable indicator. Follow this link for more information about S.M.A.R.T. technology.

corecode->SMARTReporter.

Delete locked files in Mac OS X with ‘What’s Keeping Me?’


For some time I have been using a small app called What’s Keeping Me to find out what process is locking a file. And it’s free!

About What’s Keeping Me?

Have you ever have the problem where you can’t empty the Trash or eject a disk because something is preventing you? Usually the reason is because some application has a file open, and thus you can’t get rid of the disk or trash the file. That’s why we made What’s Keeping Me! What’s Keeping Me will identify the application that is holding the item open. You can then use What’s Keeping Me to quit the problem application (or kill it if needed) so you can perform your task. What’s Keeping Me includes an Automator workflow so you can perform searches directly from the Finder too!

Download

Mac Tweak: Lose Name When Copying Email Address

I found this the other day! It’s just awesome.

Great post at maclife.com!

If you frequently copy email addresses out of Mail using the Control-click contextual menu. By default, Mail.app includes the user’s real name as well as their email address — that is, until you take a visit to Applications > Utilities > Terminal and type in the following with Mail.app closed: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO — goodbye, real name, hello email address only!

Source: maclife.com | 6 Secrets of the Mac OS X Mail App

Keep your drives clean with BlueHarvest 4

A while ago I came across a small app that does one thing great; It keeps my USB- and network-drives clean of the hidden files that Mac OS X adds in the background. Spotlight files etc. This is a killer feature when you work in a mixed Windows/Mac environment.

Simply put, it saves me a lot of moaning from colleagues after I borrow their thumb-drives!

The easiest way to keep your disks and file servers clean of Mac “dust”. BlueHarvest automatically removes DS_Store and ._ AppleDouble files (resource forks) from your USB keys, SD cards and file servers, etc. BlueHarvest removes these items as they’re created so you’ll always be “dust” free.

Link: http://www.zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest4/

Linked: eagerZeroedThick powershell script

I found this great Powershell script that convert virtual disk files to eagered zeroed.

Awesome script! I had to make some changes to make it work in my environment.

 function Set-EagerZeroThick{
 param($vcName, $vmName, $hdName)

# Find ESX host for VM
 $vmImpl = Get-VM $vmName
 Write-Host $vmImpl
 if($vmImpl.PowerState -ne "PoweredOff"){
 Write-Host "Guest must be powered off to use this script !" -ForegroundColor red
 return $false
 }

 $vm = $vmImpl | Get-View
 Write-Host $vm
 $esxName = (Get-View $vm.Runtime.Host).Name
 Write-Host $esxName
# Find datastore path
 $dev = $vm.Config.Hardware.Device[10] | where {$_.DeviceInfo.Label -eq $hdName}
 Write-Host $dev
 if($dev.Backing.thinProvisioned){
 return $false
 }
 $hdPath = $dev.Backing.FileName
 Write-Host $hdPath

# For Virtual Disk Manager we need to connect to the ESX server
 $esxHost = Connect-VIServer -Server $esxName -User $esxAccount -Password $esxPasswd

# Convert HD
 $vDiskMgr = Get-View -Id (Get-View ServiceInstance -Server $esxHost).Content.VirtualDiskManager
 Write-Host $vDiskMgr
 $dc = Get-Datacenter -Server $esxHost | Get-View
 Write-Host $dc
 $taskMoRef = $vDiskMgr.EagerZeroVirtualDisk_Task($hdPath, $dc.MoRef)
 Write-Host $taskMoRef
 $task = Get-View $taskMoRef
 Write-Host $task
 while("running","queued" -contains $task.Info.State){
 $task.UpdateViewData("Info")
 }

 Disconnect-VIServer -Server $esxHost -Confirm:$false

# Connect to the vCenter
 Connect-VIServer -Server $vcName
 if($task.Info.State -eq "success"){
 return $true
 }
 else{
 return $false
 }
}

$vmName = "vm1"
$vCenter = "vcenter_server"
$esxAccount = "rootuser"
$esxPasswd = "password"

Set-EagerZeroThick $vCenter $vmName "Hard disk 1"

To validate before and after running the eageredZeroed script I run the following script:

$vm = Get-VM vm1 | Get-View
$vm.config.Hardware.Device[10].backing
$vm.config.Hardware.Device[10].DeviceInfo

Source: http://www.lucd.info/2009/11/15/scripts-for-yellow-bricks-advise-thin-provisioning-alarm-eagerzeroedthick/

Linked: Move-Template

A couple of days ago I found a really great PowerCLI script that move templates i vSphere. Awesome post and script by afokkema at ict-freak.nl!

Storage vMotion is a great feature to Move your VMs to other datastores. But what if you want to move your Templates?
In the current version of vSphere there is no option within the Client

function Move-Template{
    param( [string] $template, [string] $esx, [string] $datastore)

    if($template -eq ""){Write-Host "Enter a Template name"}
    if($esx -eq ""){Write-Host "Enter an ESX hostname"}
    if($esx -ne "" -and $datastore -eq ""){$vmotion = $true}
    if($datastore -ne ""){$svmotion = $true}

    Write-Host "Converting $template to VM"
    $vm = Set-Template -Template (Get-Template $template) -ToVM 

    if($svmotion){
        Write-Host "Migrate $template to $esx and $datastore"
        Move-VM -VM (Get-VM $vm) -Destination (Get-VMHost $esx) `
        -Datastore (Get-Datastore $datastore) -Confirm:$false
        (Get-VM $vm | Get-View).MarkAsTemplate() | Out-Null
    }        

    if($vmotion){
        Write-Host "Migrate $template to $esx"
        Move-VM -VM $vm -Destination (Get-VMHost $esx) -Confirm:$false
        ($vm | Get-View).MarkAsTemplate() | Out-Null
    }
}

The function above can be used to move a single template via:

Move-Template <template> <esxhost> <datastore>

Source: http://ict-freak.nl/2010/01/21/powercli-move-template/