Your favorite Macintosh utilities and tools

[Stubakka]

on a daily basis, i use Carbon copy cloner, Onyx, Disk warrior, Data rescue 3 ARD, Drive Genius 3, what other tools do you use for troubleshooting or hardware verification like failing drives or even other methods you use for related tasks.

[Chris_Hafner]

Those are some good ones. I happen to use all of those except for Onyx. I'll add
** Have to double thumbs up for Disk Warrior **
• TechTool Pro (for longer hardware checks
• AST for Quicker Hardware Checks
• Disk Utility (Actually, I really love this simple utility)
• Klix (Though there are probably better SD card recovery tools out there)

[donmontalvo]

We've used an EA to gather output of:

diskutil info disk0 | grep SMART

We used to use Disk Warrior, but that was years ago. We've had fewer problems, so we rarely use it anymore.

Self Service can be used to flush caches, just be aware a reboot is recommended for some types of caches (although some folks like to live on the wild side and skip the reboot; we like to minimize risk <g>):

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=6151

[franton]

fseventer
Iceberg
Pacifist
KyPass Companion
GitHub for Mac

[donmontalvo]

@franton][/url Look at Packages.app, which is Iceberg's successor.

http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html

Don

[franton]

I have and to be fair, I don't use either too much. They're handy for rare cases like Xcode where nothing else will do!

[Stubakka]

Feel like a kid in a candy store haha, keep them coming guys.

[RaulSantos]

Platypus

[RaulSantos]

NFS Manager
Wireshark
whichSwitch

[denmoff]

@donmontalvo That EA is a nice addition. I just added that to my inventory and created a smart group to place machines that do not have "Verified" as the result. I'd love to hear more tips like that. Any suggestions on where to look? It would be cool to have a "Tips" thread for stuff like that.

[stevewood]

AutoPkg
Jenkins
Packages
TextMate
DiskUtil
AST

Shameless web plug:

AutoPkg setup: http://osofrio.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/autopkg-your-new-best-friend/

Jenkins Setup: http://osofrio.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/meet-my-new-assistant-jenkins/

AutoPkg & Jenkins together: http://osofrio.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/jenkins-autopkg-love-at-first-sight/

[donmontalvo]

@denmoff][/url][/url

@donmontalvo][/url][/url That EA is a nice addition. I just added that to my inventory and created a smart group to place machines that do not have "Verified" as the result.

It's also listed under Computer Group > Storage Information > SMART Status, I forget why but there was a reason we were using an EA to pull the status (previous gig).

Don

[bajones]

SMART Utility has saved me a lot of time in diagnosing pending hard drive failure, even when the OS reports the SMART status as "Verified"

[nortonpc]

Since these have not been mentioned yet, I would throw them out there. Andrina has a bunch of pretty nifty scripts she talked about at the Jnuc in her github. I have been fooling around with the one that uses sysdiadnose to email a system report. https://github.com/andrina/JNUC2013/tree/master/Users%20Do%20Your%20Job.

Also Since I do a lot of automation and policies, cocoadialog and jamfhelper are used all the time around here.

[stevewood]

Duh...I stuck to primarily stuff I fire off myself, didn't think about cocoaDialog or jamfHelper. Gotta include dockutil in there as well.

And some other great GitHub sites:

https://github.com/rtrouton
https://github.com/andrewseago/AndrewSeago---Scripts
https://github.com/ox-it/mac-scripts.git
https://github.com/futureimperfect
https://github.com/macbrained/
https://github.com/rmanly

And of course one or two web sites:

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/
http://managingosx.wordpress.com/
http://macops.ca

[hkim]

To add to Steve's awesome list,

http://magervalp.github.io
https://github.com/timsutton

[mm2270]

Agreed with almost all mentioned here. I'll add:

Lingon
LaunchControl

for creating and/or editing LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons

[damienbarrett]

Some that I use periodically that are not yet listed here:

- PListEdit Pro
- PhotoBulk (I stamp damage evidence photos with the computer's serial number; for documentation)
- Passenger
- The Luggage (rarely; I've started using Composer and Packages almost exclusively)
- OmniGraffle Pro (for flowcharts and diagrams)
- MacTracker (every Mac ever made)
- FileJuicer
- BBEdit
- Acorn

[nessts]

The unix guy will pipe in now
perl
vi/vim
ssh
rsync
PListBuddy
defaults

but thats me doing more from the command line in one day than most Mac people do in their lives :)

[Stubakka]

My brain just exploded with all this... so many new toys, most are beyond me at the moment but that Smart utility seems WONDERFUL, currently i use Data Rescue 3 to diagnose drive failures.

[bentoms]

• http://ss64.com
• TextWrangler
• JAMF Nation
• MacEnterprise
• Composer (like FSEventer, to check for changed files pre/post.. Then compare with TextWrangler).
• http://krypted.com
• http://derflounder.wordpress.com
• http://managingosx.wordpress.com
• http://macmule.com (cheeky as it's my own blog, but I post to remind myself & always reuse parts of my scripts).

[musat]

Gonna have to parse through these posts next week to see what all of these great tools do.

[krichterjr]

Great post! Certainly one to bookmark. The only one I haven't seen that I do like is...

Batchmod http://www.lagentesoft.com/batchmod/

[krichterjr]

Oh...and I prefer CoRD over Remote Desktop Connection for those times I need to connect to a windows machine.

[chris_kemp]

My additions: Loginox (10.9 version pending!)
Deeper
GeekTool - I use this for putting dynamic information on the users' Desktops (IP address, disk full status, etc).
UltraEdit - a plug for my favorite text editor. :)

Oh - and if you need help being distraction-free (like, oh, taking your Apple recertification exams...) I recommend Desktop Curtain.

[Aaron]

Some nice suggestions here. Looks like my toolbelt will grow this day.

The things I've been using to date:

- vim (big vim fan, since forever ago)
- Python (for those times I need to pump out a quick script)
- Data Rescue
- Disk Warrior
- Wireshark
- Zenmap
- Teamviewer (for both remote Mac and Windows support)
- GeekTool

[G-Lo]

Great lists! I'll throw in a few free apps which haven't been mentioned:

• iStumbler (for wireless scanning)
• Filezilla (ftp client)
• Mactracker (for quick hardware reference)

[blackholemac]

Double Thumbs Up to DiskWarrior---rare that we have to use it but we keep it around and updated for that rare occasion

Mactracker
Pacifist
Casper Suite tools
Disk Utility
TextWrangler
vi
defaults
ssh
Apple Remote Desktop (still used for some things...especially when I want to push a one time package and don't want to add it to the JSS)
JAMFNation
Greg Neagle's blog
Rich Trouton's blog
MacEnterprise
AST (for hardware checks)

[twrangham]

I used to also use CoRD, but then found Royal TSX... and it wins hands down IMO. Not free, but if you have more than a few boxes you remote into daily, its a lifesaver.

http://www.royaltsx.com/main/home/osx.aspx

[axnessj]

Sublime Text 3 - great for scripting
PlistEdit Pro - Plists (works wonders with Composer to help find what plist changes are made)
Pacifist - Reverse Engineer pkg and dmgs
Citrix Receiver - Run Windows apps, IE, SAP..
iTerm2 - great Terminal replacement. tabs, colors, hotkeys..
HyperDock - amazing dock enhancement
Automator - Create simple .apps, such as open our VPN website in their browser

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ - advanced BASH scripting guide
http://www.perlmonks.org - welcome to the pearly gates of the monastery https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/ - tons of resources

[zmbarker]

Does anyone know of a utility/tool/app that can capture all the default file/folder permissions on a brand new computer?

[blackholemac]

Well...I guess you could capture a system image of a full Mac, convert the resulting DMG to a PKG using Composer and use a tool like Pacifist and look at permissions of the resulting PKG. Seems rather roundabout, but it would work