Lab46 Wiki

The purpose of this project is to administrate our own machines within the lair. Some of the topics this semester will require superuser privileges and thus is the importance of this project.

1. For this project you'll need the basics: Deskrtop/Laptop computer, monitor for said computer, keyboard, mouse, KVM switch, ETC.
2. Common Knowledge.
3. For this specific project Mac OS 10.5.x will be required. The following steps are different for other versions of Mac OS.

For my Desktop install I've chosen to go a different route and optimize the PowerMac G4 Cube in the back of the lair. This archaic beauty packs a whooping 480MHz PPC CPU and 512Mb of System memory! I'm sure you'll agree she's a beast.

Our goal here is to strip out all the unnecessary components of Mac OS X 10.5.x and add some repositories/package managers for some additional UNIX goodies!

Ok! So what we're going to do first is remove all the unnecessary components of Mac OS. Let's start with removing the 3D-transparent dock. To do this type the following in Terminal.app:

$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

This will provide a 2d plain dock.

Next!

We're experienced users right? Do we really need a program like spotlight indexing all our files and sucking our precious resources while doing so? I think not. We have the command line and tools like grep for our searching endeavors! So what we're going to do is remove the spotlight components from the operating system.

The files we need to remove are as follows:

1. /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
2. /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

What I've done is create a special folder to back up the spotlight files incase we ever have a need for them. SO, i've placed them in a folder named “spotlight_backup” in our root directory.

Step three.

Now that we've lightened our proverbial load so to speak, let's add the last key component apple forgot in Mac OS; that's right, a package manager. In this instance we're going to use MacPorts, Brew is also great(and easy) but is only available for intel macs. For MacPorts we're going to need and installation of XCode. This particular mac already had version 3.X installed, If you need Xcode for your system you can find it at: “https://developer.apple.com/”. So, let's move on to MacPorts. MacPorts is a wildly popular package manager for Mac OS. “http://www.macports.org/” will have all the necessary information for installation on your system. Once installed let's update our “ports” to do this type the following:

sudo port selfupdate

This will go out and sync your repositories. To install unix software use the following syntax:

sudo port install "..." 

As we draw to a close, always remember this: It's better to optimize an older piece of hardware then go out and buy something new. Optimizations are crucial for system administrators who have a wide user base and low budgets..