Reveal Mac OS X Firmware Password

Forgot the firmware password that you recently setup on your Mac? Look no further. The king of OS X himself, Topher Kessler posted an article on how to crack Mac firmware passwords using Apple’s stock Calculator (assuming you have admin access). However, if you don’t feel like reading so much, you can simply copy and paste this Python script created by davidwtbuxton (and edited by Kessler) into Terminal and it’ll do all the work for you:

python -c "print ''.join(chr(int(c, 16) ^ 170) for c in '`sudo nvram security-password`'.split('%')[1:])"

View user login history via OS X Terminal

This command-line tool displays a history of user accounts that were logged into the computer as well as the time and date of access from up to 2 months prior. It will even tell you the amount of time users spent logged in. I’ve had to use this method several times to catch high school students who were using their college friend’s usernames and passwords to login to our lab computers. So here’s how, its really simple..

CS6 for Mac still prompting for serial & authentication

With the previous Adobe Creative Suite software versions, once you input the serial number and Adobe ID credentials it asks for in the beginning, you could deploy the image out to the labs with no problems. However, starting with CS6, image deployment breaks the license (serial + credentials) which is a pain because you end up having to manually input the serial number and credentials into each computer in every lab. Fortunately, the folks at Adobe have come up with a solution to this mess. Not only does it save us time but it helps keep our hair black (or blonde…or red…whatever color your hair is. As long as it doesn’t turn white). They’ve even blessed us with a video presentation on how to do it.

Premier Pro error “Media Cache Not Found”

This error is a result of copying unnecessary preference files over to the User Template. In this case, the culprit is com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist which is a pref file that tells Premier Pro where its cache folder is located. The problem began when you first opened Premier Pro using the admin account. Premier Pro saw that its cache folder was located in /Users/admin/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/ and it stored that path name in the com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist file so it could remember where to look next time. Now, when you copy that plist over to the User Template and open Premier Pro from a normal user account, Premier reads the com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist, thinks that its cache folder is located in /Users/admin/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/ and will begin searching for it. If it can’t find that specific directory (either because that user doesn’t have permissions to access the admin’s Library folder or in my case, because the admin user’s home folder has been hidden) this error will show.

Auralia couldn’t connect to the database

There will be an error trying to open Auralia after the image has been deployed. I don’t know why the problem occurs but after contacting Auralia support and conversing with them through email after a couple of weeks the error still persists.

The situation is that there is a corrupt database file. Every time a student logs in, Auralia cannot start unless it reads settings out of that db file.

Remove iCloud Setup Assistant

The iCloud setup assistant that pops up by default when a new user logs in is irritating. Also, it’ll look bad when a student logs on and has to click no every time.