root is the most powerful user in Linux and UNIX systems, from which OS X is derived. The root user can read, write and delete every file on the system and – when placed in the wrong hands – destroy the entire system in a flash. Even power users on a Mac have very little … Read more
A new “improvement” in Yosemite is the progress bar that comes up when you start your machine. What you Mac does under the hood hasn’t really changed from Mavericks, but the progress bar implies that a long running operating is happening the background. It can look grey with a black background, or dark grey with … Read more
Every Mac has an integrated hardware test called – not surprisingly – Apple Hardware Test. When you get a new device, or if you’ve recently upgraded your memory, it’s worth checking if everything is working as expected. Otherwise you may encounter weirdo bugs sometimes down the line. To start the test, simply shutdown your Mac, … Read more
You can upload a lot with the WordPress Media Uploader, but depending on the file extension the system will not allow everything on your server by default – for security reasons. ZIP files and PDFs are fine, but something more obscure – particularly non-standard extensions or executable files – are not. I like it that … Read more
Plesk recalculates all usage statistics once every day as part of a daily maintenance script. Sometimes however you’ve made a change and would like to see statistics updated immediately rather than “sometime tomorrow”. The solution: run the statistics recalculations script manually. On CentOS the path to the file is /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics. When used on its own … Read more
I’ve just installed the Dovecot Mail Service on one of my Plesk 12 servers. It’s an alternative to the old favourite Courier IMAP/POP and a new addition in Plesk 12. Dovecot does more or less the same as Courier (i.e. lets you receive mail), but it’s a bit more configurable and debug friendly. It also offers … Read more
You can mark questions in the Stack Exchange network simply by clicking the little star icon. A yellow star means you’ve marked it as a favourite, a grey one means you haven’t. It’s a convenient bookmarking system. But where can you see a list of what you’ve starred? It’s not exactly obvious, so let me … Read more
DNS is a service that translates a domain name into a numeric IP so that one computer can talk to another. We deal with it all the time, but most mere mortals are not aware of their importance. In this article I’d like to show you how to change your computer’s DNS entries in Windows. … Read more
