Web Design » Apps

Updating Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard ‘too many files’ problem

Patrick — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:17:18 +0000

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 has been released, and I’m sure everyone is immediately rushing to download it.

I did the same, but was left staring at the message:

The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

Retrying the Installer, booting into Safe Mode and downloading the combo update all failed to work.
Delving a little deeper into the Console log files (found by opening Console.app from Applications/Utilities, clicking ‘Logs’ and the left hand side, then install.log) revealed that my install was failing due to the message

The operation couldn’t be completed. Too many open files in system

How could this be possible? The installer was the only thing running for me, and I had plenty of RAM and disk space, so what gives?
It turns out that – from this handy post – Snow Leopard only allows each process to have a maximum of 256 files open at any one time.

You can change the defaults (as shown in the link above) by typing this command into terminal:

launchctl limit maxfiles 1000000 1000000

This will set the max files per process to 1,000,000, which is more than enough.
Trying the installer again having entered this command into terminal worked perfectly!

Let me know if it fixes your problem.

1Password Plugin for Quicksilver

Patrick — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:58:00 +0000

I’ve recently developed a 1Password plugin for Quicksilver that gives you the ability to open up Go & Fill items in 1Password, as well as giving you an action to ‘Go & Fill…’ directly from Quicksilver.

To download this plugin, go over to my Github repository.

If you like the plugin then please do donate to the project – but note that this isn’t for the work I’ve done on Quicksilver itself, just the 1Password plugin.

If there’s something missing from the plugin, or you’ve found a bug then let me know – although do read the README first over at Github.

Mac OS X Dock Resource Folder

Patrick — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:50:08 +0000

We all know that we should back up all the time, especially if we’re going to go tinkering with OS X’s insides.
Seeing someone had accidentally messed up their dock resources folder (found in /System/Library/Core Services/Dock.app/Contents/Resources) I posted in the macrumors forums with a download link for the folder in question.
A year or so later I removed the file from my hosting, only to be bombarded with emails and PMs from others who’d done exactly the same thing – who’d have thought it!

Below you can find a link to the dock resources folder for Snow Leopard.

I’ve been asked for Leopard and other OS X versions of the folder. If you have these then do email them to me so I can add them here!

Snow Leopard 10.6.1: 10.6.1 Resources.zip
Snow Leopard 10.6.3: 10.6.3 Resources.zip

And for the future?

Always make a backup!

Toggling Caffeine with Quicksilver to keep your Mac awake

Patrick — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:46:41 +0000

Caffeine is a tiny little app that keeps your Mac awake when needed; be it when you’re watching a video (for some reason, Adobe Flash doesn’t keep your Mac awake), reading something off your screen, or anything else.

It sits in the menu bar waiting to be summoned when needed, and dismissed just as easily.

Being the lazy type I am (thanks to the inevitable Quicksilver), dragging the mouse over to click the icon is just too much work. Below is an applescript which I run from Quicksilver with 3 key presses (I could set it as a trigger if I really wanted) and it switches it on or off, or even opens it if it’s not running.

tell application "System Events" if exists (process "Caffeine") then tell application "Caffeine" if active is false then turn on else turn off end if end tell else tell application "Caffeine" to activate end if end tell

This will launch the app if it’s not running. If it is running it’ll check to see if your Mac is on Caffeine (i.e. if it’s turned on) and carry out the required action.

This is all possible thanks to Caffeine being scriptable. It’s always great when developers add applescript support as well as others to their apps – it makes the Mac experience that bit more cosy.

You can download the applescript here
I’ve even added the right icon to the script

All that needs doing is setting up a trigger in Quicksilver, or placing it in
~/Library/Scripts/.

Done!

iTunes – ‘Random’ Shuffle & Recently Unplayed

Patrick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:23:20 +0000

Listening to music whenever at my Mac, I’ve come to realise iTunes shuffle doesn’t actually shuffle as you might expect.
That is, it’s not completely random. Tracks are selected based on skip count and play count.
If you’ve skipped a track a few times, it’s less likely to be played in shuffle mode than those with a higher play count.

Now, in need of some kind of method to make sure ALL of my tracks get played (I had some un-played from over a year ago because of iTunes’ lack of shuffling) I set up my own custom smart playlist to sit alongside the ‘Recently Played’ playlist.

Recently Unplayed

This is a fairly simple filter that does what it says on the tin.

I set up the filter as below:

My Recently Uplayed Playlist

The last 3 filters just get rid of the junk and make sure it’s only music. You must make sure ‘Live updating’ is ticked.

Now, I can listen to my music on a 40 day or so (for me) rota, with about 50 songs in my playlist at any one time; and this playlist is still on shuffle so it’s never the same

If you’re thinking ‘but I like the way iTunes works. I don’t want to listen to the tracks I’ve skipped!’, then my reasoning would be DELETE THEM!

Hope this helps someone… it took me a while and a bit of searching to find out that iTunes (and apparently iPods as well) don’t really have a random shuffle.