Since upgrading to macOS Ventura, managing custom startup/shutdown schedules directly from the GUI (via Energy Saver) is no longer possible.

SOLUTION

While this feature is not accessible from the GUI anymore, it can still be accomplished using pmset command.

To list all the existing schedules:

pmset -g sched

By default, it is empty.

To schedule a daily shutdown at 11 PM:

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 23:00:00

While you can achieve a similar outcome by creating a cron job with shutdown -h now, you can pull off various power management actions using pmset, such as shutting down the machine when the UPS emergency is reached or control when the disk/screen should wake up or sleep.

To configure the machine to shut down at 11 PM daily and power on at 1 AM Sunday:

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 23:00:00 wakeorpoweron S 1:00:00

To show the new schedules:

> pmset -g sched                                                                                                
Repeating power events:
  wakepoweron at 1:00AM Saturday
  shutdown at 11:00PM every day

If you are as forgetful as me, the above command ensures the machine doesn’t run constantly, and it wakes up at 1 AM every Sunday to perform the Time Machine backup to another server.

To learn more, view pmset manual.

The post Mac: Managing Startup/Shutdown Schedules on macOS Ventura appeared first on My Shitty Code.

PROBLEM

When trying to map multiple subdomains (ex: a.localhost, b.localhost, c.localhost, d.localhost) to the same IP, it is not possible to do the following in /etc/hosts:

# /etc/hosts

1.2.3.4 *.localhost

Rather, each subdomain has to be explicitly defined:

# /etc/hosts

1.2.3.4 a.localhost b.localhost c.localhost d.localhost

It requires you to babysit and manage these wildcard subdomains over time, but you do have a good job security.

SOLUTION

Configuration

Install a DNS forwarder using Homebrew.

brew install dnsmasq

Create a configuration to map the wildcard subdomains to the same IP.

sudo bash -c \
  'echo "address=/localhost/1.2.3.4" > /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.d/localhost.conf'

Restart the service.

sudo brew services restart dnsmasq

Create /etc/resolver directory.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/resolver

Create a custom DNS resolver where the file name is the domain name.

sudo bash -c \
  'echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolver/localhost'

Verification

Flush the DNS cache first.

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Verify that ping command on each subdomain resolves to the correct IP.

$ ping -c 1 a.localhost
PING a.localhost (1.2.3.4): 56 data bytes

$ ping -c 1 b.localhost
PING b.localhost (1.2.3.4): 56 data bytes

$ ping -c 1 a.b.c.localhost
PING a.b.c.localhost (1.2.3.4): 56 data bytes

The post Wildcard Subdomains in /etc/hosts appeared first on My Shitty Code.

If you have a decent Logitech keyboard/mouse, chances are you might also have a Logitech Unifying Receiver, which is a small USB dongle that allows multiple Logitech devices to be connected to a single computer. This is useful if your institution disables the Bluetooth connectivity on the institution-managed Chromebook. However, if your institution also prevents you from installing Logitech Unifying for Chrome extension, how can you still get this to work on your Chromebook without thinking about quitting your job?

SOLUTION

The trick here is to use your Mac/Windows computer to get the devices added to the Logitech Unifying Receiver first before transferring the USB receiver to your Chromebook.

Attach the Logitech Unifying Receiver to your Mac/Windows computer. If your modern computer only has USB-C ports, use a “USB-C to USB” adapter.

Install Logitech Options.

From Logitech Options, add the keyboard/mouse as Unifying devices by clicking on the ADD UNIFYING DEVICE button.

Once added, attach the USB receiver to your Chromebook.

Note: If your keyboard/mouse has the multi-device switch, you can use the same set of devices on both Mac/Windows computer and Chromebook. In this case, you may configure Switch #1 using Bluetooth (for Mac/Windows computer) and Switch #2 using Logitech Unifying Receiver (for Chromebook).

The post Chromebook: Using Logitech Unifying Receiver appeared first on My Shitty Code.

You have a shiny Mac laptop running macOS Big Sur. This laptop is connected to an old external monitor via HDMI. The screen quality looks pixelated and fuzzy.

Running font smoothing (as below) doesn’t fix the problem:

defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 3

You are poor enough to buy a new 4K monitor.

SOLUTION

The usage of HDMI seems to fool macOS Big Sur, thinking your old monitor is a glorious new TV. This causes macOS to use YPbPr instead of RGB mode.

The fix is to perform Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) override to force macOS to use RGB mode.

Some instructions on the web are inaccurate. There’s no need to reboot into Recovery Mode to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) via csrutil first.

Instead, run the following command:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides
cd /Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides
sudo curl -O https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ejdyksen/8302862/raw/patch-edid.rb
sudo ruby patch-edid.rb

Reboot the laptop.

The post macOS Big Sur: Poor Screen Quality When Connecting to Old Monitor via HDMI appeared first on My Shitty Code.

To perform an offline (or airgapped) installation, sometimes it’s not sufficient to download just the needed RPM package. In most cases, this package requires a list of dependencies to be installed too.

For example, Nginx requires at least 20 different packages in order for its installation to be successful:-

$ sudo yum deplist nginx
package: nginx.x86_64 1:1.16.1-1.el7
  dependency: /bin/sh
   provider: bash.x86_64 4.2.46-34.el7
  dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.17)(64bit)
   provider: glibc.x86_64 2.17-307.el7.1
  dependency: libcrypt.so.1()(64bit)
   provider: glibc.x86_64 2.17-307.el7.1
  ...
  ...
  ...
  dependency: system-logos
   provider: redhat-logos.noarch 70.7.0-1.el7
  dependency: systemd
   provider: systemd.x86_64 219-73.el7_8.8

SOLUTION

The first step to spin up an instance using the same Linux distro/version and this instance must have internet access.

Download the following yum plugin that allows the package(s) to be downloaded without installing them:-

sudo yum install yum-plugin-downloadonly

Download the needed package (in this case, Nginx) and its dependencies into a directory:-

sudo yum install --downloadonly --downloaddir=/tmp/nginx nginx

To inspect what’s being downloaded:-

$ ls -a /tmp/nginx | sort
.
..
dejavu-fonts-common-2.33-6.el7.noarch.rpm
dejavu-sans-fonts-2.33-6.el7.noarch.rpm
fontconfig-2.13.0-4.3.el7.x86_64.rpm
fontpackages-filesystem-1.44-8.el7.noarch.rpm
gd-2.0.35-26.el7.x86_64.rpm
gperftools-libs-2.6.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
libjpeg-turbo-1.2.90-8.el7.x86_64.rpm
libX11-1.6.7-2.el7.x86_64.rpm
libX11-common-1.6.7-2.el7.noarch.rpm
libXau-1.0.8-2.1.el7.x86_64.rpm
libxcb-1.13-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
libXpm-3.5.12-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-all-modules-1.16.1-1.el7.noarch.rpm
nginx-filesystem-1.16.1-1.el7.noarch.rpm
nginx-mod-http-image-filter-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-mod-http-perl-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-mod-http-xslt-filter-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-mod-mail-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
nginx-mod-stream-1.16.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
redhat-indexhtml-7-13.el7.noarch.rpm

Now, this directory can be safely compressed into a tarball to be copied to the target instance without internet access.

After extracting the tarball in the target instance, it’s time to install the package:-

sudo yum -y --disablerepo=* localinstall /tmp/nginx/*.rpm

This command is smart enough to figure out all the dependencies within the directory and install them in the proper order.

The post RPM: Performing Offline Installation appeared first on My Shitty Code.